OT: Big Society

notsoblue

What are people's thoughts on this?

I think this article, and the side splitting irony contained within it, pretty much sums up my opinion of the initiative.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011 ... lunteering

Big society tsar Lord Wei 'doesn't have enough time to perform role'
Man kickstarting volunteering revolution finds working for free three days a week is incompatible with 'having a life'

rjsterry

Well quite. Most of us need to put in extra hours at work to make ends meet, so I'm not quite sure when we are supposed to find all this extra time to donate. Are they planning to add another day to the week?

walkingbootweather

Priceless

Jay dubbleU

That's OK - we can obviously all take up non-executive directorships to pay the bills whilst we're taking meals to old people or cleaning the streets or removing graffiti etc :roll:

NGale

I had one of the local old tory eejits tell me the other day 'You young people don't know what volunteeing is, you need to give up some of your time to help others'

I asked him if he would supply me with another day in the week so I could do something after working with cadets for two evenings a week (and at least 5 weekends a year), a night a week as an scout leader (again with occassional weekends) and first aid events with the Red Cross.

No wonder I'm bloody tired, I'm taking on the 'big society' single handed :shock:

Agent57

I've no idea WTF "big society" is supposed to mean.

mr_poll

Agent57 wrote:

I've no idea WTF "big society" is supposed to mean.

Basically it means - we pay taxes to the government for them to pay for services, they stop using those taxes to provide those services and want us to do it ourselves.

ie - The local train line isnt very profitable, we wont use your taxes to prop up public transport - however if you fancy being a train driver/signal man/engineer/ticket seller then have a go.

- The local library is only used by children/schools/elderly people and community groups - anyone wanna be a librarian?

- Clearing leaves to prevent drainage getting blocked and causing floods, nah we cant use ur taxes for that - if you have a broom would you mind doing it yourself when you get back from work

Hope that helps

Agent57

And in return, they stop taxing me, amirite?

mr_poll

Agent57 wrote:

And in return, they stop taxing me, amirite?

LOL

deptfordmarmoset

Is it just me or does Cameron's Big Society idea look a little like he's trying to blow up a balloon by sucking the air out?

tailwindhome

Agent57 wrote:

I've no idea WTF "big society" is supposed to mean.

It's change you can believe in as things can only get better.

jeremyrundle

The problem is volunteers, volunteers in hospitals, schools, nurserys, it is because people VOLUNTEER that society now expects it, and so does the government, if people stopped volunteering and stopped expecting others to then the government would have to create "jobs" waged............

Get off the soapbox you volunteers in places like hospitals and give the jobs back to the out of work.

I do however support volunteers in places like cubs, scouts, weekend football etc where no PAID work has been taken away.

shouldbeinbed

Mr Poll has it right, basically its Dave saying he wants his cake, yours as well and for you to do the washing up afterwards.

the problem is that there are huge numbers of people volunteering already, and huge numbers that could but don't/won't/Can't. Call me Dave isn't going to have much luck with either side as those that don't volunteer in the 'good times' aren't going to come over all public spirited whilst being hit from all sides

and those of us that do are already busy getting on with it (and in my case working longer hours fighting for my paid job, losing pay, paying out more week on week) where do I find the time to work more for free when it could cost me my livliehood and how can I give to charity when a) I already do & b) Mr Camerons policies are seeing me losing income and haemorrage what money I barely had in the first place.

its a 'ladies who lunch' policy that shows how far out of touch the millionaire elite are with the realities of 99.99% of the rest of us.

EKE_38BPM

shouldbeinbed wrote:

its a 'ladies who lunch' policy that shows how far out of touch the millionaire elite are with the realities of 99.99% of the rest of us.

+1

bunter

some of this big society sh*te might work if we didn't already work some of the longest hours in Europe, under pressure of losing our jobs whilst suffering real terms loss of income and quality of life. People who are well paid, secure in their jobs and work reasonable hours without pressure to work at home evenings and weekends may well start to think about volunteering.

Where are all the super-rich philanthropists prepared to use some of their massive piles of cash to make any of this happen? These people are getting richer by the second apparently but spend most of their time figuring out ever more ingenious ways to avoid paying tax.

jeremyrundle

I was a volunteer in Oxfam, Staines, Middlesex, many years ag, when the area managers then had a company car and £18k pa, we used to get a box of tea and coffee a week out of petty cash, and a pack of biscuits for the volunteers each day.

Then a letter came round asking that "takings" no longer be used for the "benefit of staff".

I left that week and have never given to Oxfam since.

Now I volunteer for only woek that I know would NOT replace a waged person, and where the money stays in this country, RNLI and the Big issue are my donations now, sorry.

NGale

With the cadets we do get 'paid' a small amount when we attend training courses or act as supervisor on one of the offshore trips. However when it just covers travel to the training location and a small daily subsidy it can only ever be said it is to cover loss of earnings.

When I account for the amount of parade nights I attend ('unpaid') hours spent putting together training programmes ('unpaid'), booking cadets onto courses ('unpaid') weekends away on unit training, rather than adult continuing professional development ('unpaid'). I put in far more than I ever get out money wise. However I enjoy doing it and most of the time the best payment is having a cadet saying thank you when they have passed a test, advanced or even said thank you after passing his recruit test for the Royal Marines and saying I and the other staff had given him the motivation to go through with it and help him prepare.

Money is a nice little extra to cover for transport, but it is by no means my motivating factor.

W1

bunter wrote:

some of this big society sh*te might work if we didn't already work some of the longest hours in Europe, under pressure of losing our jobs whilst suffering real terms loss of income and quality of life. People who are well paid, secure in their jobs and work reasonable hours without pressure to work at home evenings and weekends may well start to think about volunteering.

Where are all the super-rich philanthropists prepared to use some of their massive piles of cash to make any of this happen? These people are getting richer by the second apparently but spend most of their time figuring out ever more ingenious ways to avoid paying tax.

Yes, as usual the answer is (a) well someone else can do it and/or (b) well someone else can pay some more tax. It's never (c) - I'll do something about it, which of course is much harder than (a) or (b).

notsoblue

W1 wrote:

Yes, as usual the answer is (a) well someone else can do it and/or (b) well someone else can pay some more tax. It's never (c) - I'll do something about it, which of course is much harder than (a) or (b).

What do you think of the Big Society, W1?

rjsterry

The basic idea - people should get more involved in their community - is a good one (if a bit motherhood and apple pie), but nobody in government seems to have bridged the gap between the rhetoric and the day to day logistics. As someone pointed out this morning, there's not much point volunteering to help out at your local library if your local council has closed it. The number of previous supporters, who are now having serious doubts about the implementation seems to be growing.

bails87

Stealing my threadseh....

My view:

bails87 wrote:

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?

notsoblue

bails87 wrote:

Stealing my threadseh....

This forum has a section for mountainbikes?!

bails87 wrote:

My view:

Very well put...

W1

notsoblue wrote:

W1 wrote:

Yes, as usual the answer is (a) well someone else can do it and/or (b) well someone else can pay some more tax. It's never (c) - I'll do something about it, which of course is much harder than (a) or (b).

What do you think of the Big Society, W1?

I don't know enough about it to comment (so I haven't) but my perception accords with RJSterry/RJSTerry.

What do you think NSB?

bails87

notsoblue wrote:

bails87 wrote:

Stealing my threadseh....

This forum has a section for mountainbikes?!

It's where all the cool kids hang out!

An interesting look at a mini "Big Society" (so just a "society"?) in Hammersmith, where the Tory council was put forward as a model for the BS here.

shm_uk

Underlying the whole 'Big Society' thing the PM is basically saying stop expecting the Government to be responsible for every single little occurrence in our daily lives.

There are plenty of things that people can do for themselves, rather than stamping their feet until Nanny at No. 10 comes running ...

Society needs to be more responsible for themselves and have more accountability.

For some reason everybody seems to think that just by handing over a wadge of tax each month they can then just sit back and everything will be taken care of by 'Government'.

"We are all in this together" - provided it doesn't interfere with my life thankyou very much.

wgwarburton

jeremyrundle wrote:

The problem is volunteers, volunteers in hospitals, schools, nurserys, it is because people VOLUNTEER that society now expects it, and so does the government, if people stopped volunteering and stopped expecting others to then the government would have to create "jobs" waged............

..and who's going to pay their wages?

Get off the soapbox you volunteers in places like hospitals and give the jobs back to the out of work.

Typically, if these jobs arn't done by volunteers, they won't get done at all.

I do however support volunteers in places like cubs, scouts, weekend football etc where no PAID work has been taken away.

Every organisation I'm involved in is desperately short of volunteers- it's always the same few people who are prepared to pitch up and devote their time. To the majority of users of the "service", it's something they would prefer not to lose but arn't prepared to commit time to- "too difficult", "I couldn't do that", "it's elitist", "I don't have time"... Generally, "don't have time" seems to mean- "not prepared to make time as I'm too busy down the pub/watching telly/doing my hair/ironing etc". Football, rugby, judo, sailing, after-school-sports, community council, community development trust, local paper, school parent council.. you name it and there will be a few people struggling to fit what needs doing into their spare time while a bunch of others use it as a childcare service.
The people who are making the time usually have more on their plate than the ones who are too busy- they just think it's important enough to make it happen. If they drop out there will be choruses of despair from the others: Someone should do something! Rarely: I will do something! It's always somebody else's role to do it.
Taking the Big Society message to volunteer groups is a hard sell because the people who volunteer are already overstretched. What's needed to make the idea work is to get Other People to volunteer and help out.... The concept of engendering a society where we all feel we need to put in some time and pull our weight is sound but it's a hard, hard sell. There are too many excuses (too busy, someone should be paid to do it etc.) and it's very easy to be discouraged by a few wasters.

I'd be interested to hear some alternative proposals. It seems to me that people need to wake up to the realities of contemporary economics- people simply arn't prepared to work for peanuts these days and we can't afford a Big State (which would be a spectacularly inefficient system, anyway). If you pay a little to encourage people it diminishes those who give their time and sets expectations that often can't be met.

How much should a lifeboatman be paid? If you compensate for loss-of-earnings do you pay the butcher's apprentice a tenth of what the doctor gets?

I'm skeptical that Mr Cameron's Big Society idea will really work but I can see where he's coming from, and in the current environment I can see the need for it... and not only do I not have any better ideas but also I can see clearly that many of the "alternatives" are either fundamentally flawed or just plain daft.

To those who denigrate the concept- what do you propose? Big Government? Services for profit? No services?

Cheers,
W.

W1

WGWarburton wrote:

I'd be interested to hear some alternative proposals. It seems to me that people need to wake up to the realities of contemporary economics- people simply arn't prepared to work for peanuts these days and we can't afford a Big State (which would be a spectacularly inefficient system, anyway). If you pay a little to encourage people it diminishes those who give their time and sets expectations that often can't be met.

I'm skeptical that Mr Cameron's Big Society idea will really work but I can see where he's coming from, and in the current environment I can see the need for it... and not only do I not have any better ideas but also I can see clearly that many of the "alternatives" are either fundamentally flawed or just plain daft.

I think this also makes a lot of sense.

jeremyrundle

Perhaps more volunteers should be from the other backgrounds

http://www.volunteering.org.uk/NR/rdonl ... sVE083.pdf

Page 4 makes interesting reading :!:

I thought the BIG society was supposed to be EVERYONE not just one particular background of people..............

davmaggs

It should also be about removing obstacles actually created by the state from those who are getting involved. e.g CRB checks, specific licence required to drive a mini-bus when pre 199x it wasn't needed, huge amounts of liability insurance when no case for those amounts has ever occured. Paperwork to get small grants costs more to approve than the grant itself.

For example the volunteer coffee shop in my park had to subject all the unpaid cake makers to a health and safety inspection. Bit by bit the regulation is creeping up on them.

rjsterry

davmaggs wrote:

It should also be about removing obstacles actually created by the state from those who are getting involved. e.g CRB checks, specific licence required to drive a mini-bus when pre 199x it wasn't needed, huge amounts of liability insurance when no case for those amounts has ever occured. Paperwork to get small grants costs more to approve than the grant itself.

For example the volunteer coffee shop in my park had to subject all the unpaid cake makers to a health and safety inspection. Bit by bit the regulation is creeping up on them.

Yes, but...

A lot of these regulations - albeit somewhat over-reactive and possibly over cautious - were brought in for sound reasons after very serious incidents. I'm sure many can remember being taken to a scout camp or similar event in an overloaded, under-maintained minibus driven by a well-meaning, but inexperienced parent. It's too easy to reach for the 'elf'n'safety gawn mad cliché.

bails87

Uncle Dave's friendly childcare services.
Thanks to new government legislation, I'm no longer required to undergo a CRB check, or declare that my name is on a certain register....which it isn't.....

Anyway, send your kids to my free, volunteer run daycare centre.
Just remember, what goes at Dave's, stays at Dave's......

Won't someone think of the children?!

Hmmm, not sure why I went with 'Dave' in the above. I'm not saying Cameron is a paedophile!

Anyhoo, I'm all for neighbours helping each other out, clearing snow from the pavement and all that stuff. You know, all the things that you've always been allowed to do, but the tabloids make up stories that make you think you'll be sued if you do them, so you stop.

That's fine, I get that, it's sensible. But you can't do that for everything. Who cleans the snow off a dual carriageway? Or a pedestrian crossing 'island'? Or a cyclepath? Where does the snow go? Just dump it in the road? What about parks and public spaces? What if someone doesn't do it? What if someone can't because of disability? Would something like that even make much difference? No-one ever clears the pavements of snow around by me, apart from people who live there. There's no snow-clearing army of council workers who come to do it. But.....it's an easy thing to do, in theory.

What isn't easy is running a care home, or a library, or a forest. So cutting those things and throwing them out into the "Big Society" might mean that they're going to big business and you'll be sent a bill for your care, or they won't exist at all.