Big Society?

It would be a positive move if everyone on benefits could make a positive contribution to society while looking for a job

That would be a practical Big Society initiative. Putting someting back while society gives you a helping hand. Kind of quid pro quo.

Lots of people do volunteer - but public service for the common good has to be embedded in the benefits sytem too.

If we are paying people on benefits, it would cost no more to have them volunteer in return.

At the moment Big Society is just a soundbite. We need to mobilise 2 million people behind it. I worked for a voluntary organisation where lots of people on benefits gained job experience so it can be done.

I agree with longfingernails post. Very good summary and yes we do need a bit of investment in IDS ideas to get this going.

Yes of course I can see that they are different, and that there is a place for donation on top of taxation. But it is still possible to imagine a community in which the state is viewed as an instrument established by all of us as our agent in the provision of social justice and the assistence of the needy -- just as we might view the governing body of a charity. The more taxation is celebrated as our common strategy for the provision of support, and the less it is portrayed as somehting stolen from us, then the more empowered we can be and feel as citizens acting in a common project.

This is what it sounds like to me: Government cuts lead to unemployment. What to do with people out of work? Encourage them to work in voluntary sector for nothing. How are they supported? Benefits. Could this be a way of keeping people on benefits rather than finding them jobs - ie more government control over people's lives, not less? Unpaid volunteers also take paid jobs away.

But if unemployment is inevitable, then this might be better than people having nothing to do. It's a sort of community service. However, a few months down the line, we'll find we don't get our benefits unless we join one of these local schemes.

That might not be a bad idea. And money is going to be poured into it from an independent wholesale bank - the Big Society Bank - which contains all money from all the bank accounts that have been untouched for 15 years or more. (Who does this money belong to??)

However, they are also going to 'leverage' private sector investment - that phrase should always ring alarm bells, because the private sector needs to make a profit. How does the private sector make a profit in this context? By charging local people.

So unemployed people, working for free, will end up paying for previously free services. Nice.

However ...

The government really want this to succeed and they are going to pour money into it, so I think local groups should grab it with both hands.

But we mustn't be conned into thinking it's about redistributing power to the people. The first thing any political party does is make sure they have as much power as possible - otherwise they wouldn't exist. No party is going to give power away, whatever they say. If people want power, they have to take it. So take the money and run with it. What's the alternative? No jobs and nothing to do. At least unemployed people will learn lots of valuable skills, and, yes, will feel part of the community, and, yes, will feel they are valued and have something to give.

On the message board after the articles someone writes:

'No mention there of promoting the creation of more credit unions which provide proper banking services for the less well off' -
this is a brilliant idea, and truly subversive of the power of the banks/government. Credit unions take your money, keep it safe and give it back to you when you need it. What banks used to do.

Prolesworth Well, obviously I was wrong!

How are you by the way? I haven't seen you posting about the Labour leadership election lately?

Eleison Surely you can see that taxation and donation are totally different - the act of giving voluntarily tp something dear to your heart is infinitely more noble than money being taken from you by distant bureaucrats who will almost certainly waste it! Time is often far more valuable than money anyway.

Yes, proles, the volunteering ethic is pretty well established I think, and I don't think it will be aided by a top-down (and in that sense anti-communitarian) attempt to squeeze it away from its natural position and into the provision of quite complex infrastructure.

Here's an idea: if the govt thinks there isn't enough of a 'mucking in' ethic by which we all accept our responsibility to the more vulnerable, why doesn't it (and why doesn't the Labour Party) have the nerve to celebrate taxation, and proselytize on its behalf, instead of assuming that we are all selish bastards who don't want to contribute a reasonable portion of our wealth to social ends.

can someone explain to me what this would mean in laymans terms - how this would work day to day?

is this a plan to cut LA resources for supporting communities.

the op states "We all know that local authorities will not have responsibility for delivering services in the future, but who will? Who will monitor it? And what will happen to the people who require support to remain in their communities? "

i didn't know this. are we talking about support for cummunity organisations and community work - or something else?

sorry for being behind the door. dh works in this sector for a LA, so would like to know if its likley he will lose his job

TIA

There will always be a role for the state, but often if the state is too bossy then society stops caring.

I think everyone agrees that we do not volunteer and help out enough as a nation.

Cameron is a "one-nation Tory" by instinct - not a Thatcherite. He comes from the patrician, paternalist school of Conservatism - a "high Tory", not a "low Tory". Of course, the fact that the nation's finances are in such a State means he has to cut. That means that it isn't just nice for society to fill the gap, but sadly essential.

However the real "big society" person isn't Cameron, it is Iain Duncan Smith. More than any other person, he is the guy who everyone, regardless of their politics, should be willing to succeed. He has that burning zeal and complete conviction - Cameron is sometimes too opportunistic, like Blair - though far less than his detractors think.

Every department has to be cut, but I hope Osborne will grant IDS the latitude to fund some of his benefit reforms this year. £500m invested in "tough love" schemes now will pay billions of dividends in the years to come - and the improvement in social cohesion will be incalculable.

I used to work for a third-sector support organisation and my experience was that voluntary community groups were baffled and upset by the constant emphasis on the need for them to become geared up to tender for public service delivery. They were being taught by government that they should cease to think in terms of grant-based support and build their capacity so that they could act as service-deliering social enterprise. I really had the impression that the whole concept was cynical on the part of local, regional, and central government. It was used to cloak two unappealing developments; the first being that grant support for the third sector was drying up; the second being the marketisation of public-service delivery.

I have very little doubt that the Big Society label is a cloak for major new tendering opportunities for the private sector. (Just like GP commissioning in the new NHS will be an opportunity for non-local private sector consortia, which will mark a real step away from community proximity to the decisionmaking processes of service provision.)

Glad Scotland might be spared a lot of this.