The "Big Society"

bails87

Or BS for short

I always thought it was just a harmless-ish gimmick, a handy catch-phrase to group together a set of initiatives and make the Tory election campaign stand out. But (IMHO) it's actually turning out to be a lot nastier than that.......

"Who needs professionally run youth centres, respite homes, hospices, libraries etc? We can let the local communities run them. For free"

"But don't you need people who know what they're doing? Also, a lot of people simply don't have time to do a lot of volunteering, what with family commitments and work."

"Good point, we'll sack a load of public sector employees, then let them come back and do their old job with all the spare time they've suddenly got. For free!"

That's how it's starting to feel to me. Things like making prisoners work for free, doing the jobs of council workers who are about to be cut loose. Or the forest sell off, (right or wrong, good or bad, I know we've been there about 30 times already) which is being done under the guise of "community involvement" i.e. If you want access to the forest, you've got to buy it for yourselves. I know Cameron has said that access rights will be kept, but there's two problems there:
1. The tories vowed not to raise VAT and not to cut EMA.
2. He didn't say no access would be cut, just that "rights" would be "maintained". So a MTB trail, or places where people walk might not be protected unless it's a right of way.

And now

The leader of Liverpool City Council has written to the prime minister withdrawing its involvement from his "big society" plans.

And

man appointed by the prime minister to kickstart a revolution in citizen activism is to scale back his hours after discovering that working for free three days a week is incompatible with "having a life".

Is it all going wrong? Or, in a few days, will the country just get back to wondering about Jordans latest f*ckbuddy or which millionaire is wearing what colour shirt at the weekends?

GHill

The theme of the idea seems quite nice. For example, if it snows clear the snow from the path in front of your house. If everyone does that, the community as a whole can benefit.

But, you're right - it's starting to feel like 'bin all the public sector workers and expect people to do it for free'.

patto583

But you can't clear the snow from the road in front of your house without the risk of some tit sueing you because some fresh snow has fallen which is more slippy than it would be if you'd left it.

And the same goes for everything else, unless there is some legal protection I won't be getting involved with anything along those lines as I don't trust the government to have borne that in mind, or to care.

This is the problem as I see it, if everybody did a bit then it would all be good, but most people won't do anything because they are worried about the litigation culture that has migrated over here from america (myself included) so those that do get involved will end up having to take on more and more, or it will all fall over.

I also think that it's an attempt to justify laying off public sector workers, which can only be a bad thing as that would be all of the experienced people in the field gone, so nobody to show the willing amateurs what to do, all in all it's a recipe for disaster.

cooldad

patto583 wrote:

But you can't clear the snow from the road in front of your house without the risk of some tit sueing you because some fresh snow has fallen which is more slippy than it would be if you'd left it.

And the same goes for everything else, unless there is some legal protection I won't be getting involved with anything along those lines as I don't trust the government to have borne that in mind, or to care.

This is the problem as I see it, if everybody did a bit then it would all be good, but most people won't do anything because they are worried about the litigation culture that has migrated over here from america (myself included) so those that do get involved will end up having to take on more and more, or it will all fall over.

I also think that it's an attempt to justify laying off public sector workers, which can only be a bad thing as that would be all of the experienced people in the field gone, so nobody to show the willing amateurs what to do, all in all it's a recipe for disaster.

If you are going to write nonsense like this it should be moved to crudcatcher.
Name an incident where anybody has been sued for shovelling snow.

Anonymous

I buried a body in the snow once. I got 30 years inside for that.

cooldad

Worth Nails is the new Australia.

Just without the beaches, sun and bikinis.

Anonymous

We actually have quite a lot of beaches. But it's ok. two out of three ain't bad.

patto583

the point isn't whether it has happened, but whether you are confident that it won't, which i'm not, so the point still stands.

GHill

patto583 wrote:

But you can't clear the snow from the road in front of your house without the risk of some tit sueing you because some fresh snow has fallen which is more slippy than it would be if you'd left it.

Get some grit (from a public grit bin).

bails87

GHill wrote:

patto583 wrote:

But you can't clear the snow from the road in front of your house without the risk of some tit sueing you because some fresh snow has fallen which is more slippy than it would be if you'd left it.

Get some grit (from a public grit bin).

Yeah, the "can't shovel snow or you'll get sued" thing was made up by the papers.

But the point is, didn't people do that sort of thing anyway, I know I did during the recent snow. Simply because no-one ever comes round and sweeps snow off residential area pavements. That's the kind of thing people are likely to be quite happy to do, unlike running libraries and the like.

Anonymous

It occurred to me this morning when I saw an ad on telly, some things are already run by a sort of volunteer thing (kinda), like the nspcc.

bfreeman0

Con Dem is such a massive lie, they've let us down so much already.
Just keep the public sector workers, because of the condems we can not afford to work for free anymore. The VAT increase is ridculous, i know how we could save a bundle stop following American in every expedition. Don't privatise the NHS, just make some of it avialble to foreigners charged at a price. The government need to come up with some original ideas to beat the recession otherwise we're just going to get poorer and poorer and angrier and angrier until we burn them.

cooldad

bfreeman0 wrote:

Con Dem is such a massive lie, they've let us down so much already.
Just keep the public sector workers, because of the condems we can not afford to work for free anymore. The VAT increase is ridculous, i know how we could save a bundle stop following American in every expedition. Don't privatise the NHS, just make some of it avialble to foreigners charged at a price. The government need to come up with some original ideas to beat the recession otherwise we're just going to get poorer and poorer and angrier and angrier until we burn them.

Give us one original idea from the wealth of your experience.

The Northern Monkey

Am I the only one that thinks..

"Ok I voted for the 1st time, everything I voted for has gone to sh!t, I don't see the point in voting again".

I just don't care any more, its all out of anyone's hands apart from the posh nonce in charge. I fail to see anything positive that this moron has done for the UK.

cooldad

It was going to sh1t before you voted. Don't blame yourself. Blame Wiggle.

bails87

It's always Wiggle's fault.

As Yeehaa says, plenty of things are volunteer run already. But how can you volunteer at your local library when the library has been shut down? Or help out at the youth club/communtity centre when the building it's based in has been sold off by the council because that makes them more money? There's nothing wrong with wanting to encourage people to volunteer, there's just a huge gulf between that idea, and what's actually happening now.

Also, how many people now would rather spend an extra couple of evenings a week, or use their weekends for working, rather than volunteering. You can't make people worse off and then expect them to start working for free.

I agree with Ben/Northern Monkey on the voting thing. I voted Lib Dem specifically to keep the Tories out (where I live it's about a 40%-40%-20% split between Lib Dem, Tory and everyone else.) Lib Dems won, by about 150 votes, so I felt like I'd contributed. It was a narrow win that took a seat off the Tories. It would keep the Tories out of office, which was the main thing I wanted. How wrong was I? :roll:

So now, who do I vote for? Speaking locally, it's only LD or Tory. Labour, UKIP, Greens etc are all wasted votes. I won't vote tory, so it's got to be LD, but I feel like my vote last time was used in a way that I wasn't happy with. I think lots of people might say they feel betrayed by the Lib Dems, and I can see why.

Oh yeah, and when the government proudly announce their new tax on banks later on today, remember this that's been kept very quiet.

montevideoguy

I've been wondering where these types of threads have disappeared to.

bails87

I'm being sensible!

Briggo

bails87 wrote:

Oh yeah, and when the government proudly announce their new tax on banks later on today, remember this that's been kept very quiet.

Nice, well done Big D.

Anyway theres one thing I can't quite understand in that column, why now not having to pay the differential amount of tax to 28% would encourage corporations to suddenly uproot and leave.

If they were happy paying the 28% tax there must have been a reason why they were in this country and not in the country paying only 10% in the first place.

Why now would not having to pay that 18% suddenly make you leave, surely it makes staying in this country even better, or am I totally missing the point?

bails87

I don't know, I didn't really understand that point either. :?