Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country

I'm currently on Jury Service, which is fascinating (but I'm quite obviously unable to discuss the trial). As I was sat there on Day One, jury after jury being called with my name failing to come out of the hat, it dawned on me this was one of the few genuine public duties people have to perform once or maybe twice in a lifetime. Yet the disdain and frustration it is viewed with is a poor reflection on our society, and a dismal projection of what the much lauded Big Society is capable of.

For anyone who has served Jury Service, you'll be aware there is a lot of sitting and waiting involved to get on a trial. I'm sympathetic with the boredom that can creep in after a whole morning reading the shit magazines they provide, and the grating agony of having to listen to that overweight woman cough her guts up every 30 seconds. But what irritates me are those who get summoned to the jurors desk, get told they are dismissed from their service early, and can barely hide their elation when skipping out of the door. What I don't like about it is we've become a society of negative, lazy moaners who if they could, wouldn't lift a finger. People expect to get everything for nothing and will point the finger of blame elsewhere as soon as it comes crashing down.

I'm a backer of the Big Society in an ideological sense, although firmly sit in the cynical camp as to whether it will practically come to fruition; partly - it has to be said - because of the lack of public appetite so clearly evident when people are asked to do something for nothing.

Except, they're not being asked to do it for nothing.

On jury service you still get paid by your employer, or can ask for compensation for loss of earnings if you're self employed. Your travel is paid for you each way (something that you don't get going to and from work). And on top of that your lunch gets paid for you up to a handsome £5.71 a day. This is the best deal a lot of people will ever get, albeit for a mere two week stint in the majority of cases. Yet the apparent burden of having to do something, as a opposed to nothing with their day, is overwhelming.

The same negative, lazy moaners surface every year when it snows and the pavements aren't gritted, and this year I was reminded by my father of what the case used to be. He made it quite clear that it isn't that the public have had a service taken away from them, or in fact that the weather is much worse. It is merely a pathetic government-blaming perception that has emerged so rampantly in recent years. Twenty years ago, people would have the pride and responsibility to clear their own paths outside their houses, in the knowledge and social pressure that when everyone did the same, the whole street would be cleared. So it seems a shame that people no longer feel that pressure, or indeed the faith that others will do the same. It feels like there is just a deflated confidence in your neighbour that they will do the right thing, and because of my limited years I can't quite place when or how that happened, but I still feel the frustration that it has.

These examples, to me, serve more usefully as challenges- specifically laying down the question of how to overcome this social lethargy. Now, I quite genuinely cannot offer any answers, which is the easiest seat in the house to sit in (and I'm aware of the irony that in doing so I am being a negative, lazy moaner), but I do feel if the Big Society is to work, a solution must be found. It may be that the Big Society itself can plant the seed of a well-functioning society - who knows.

The only thing that is clear to me, is that as I approach Day Three of my duty, I will become increasingly sick of those smiley happy people dismissed at 2pm as they rub their hands in glee in readiness for an afternoon of daytime TV.