TUC National Demonstration Against Cuts

I don't give a shit if it's patronising if it works. I would rather pay less money now to stop it costing me more later.

I was talking this over with dh last night in light of all the vitriolic comments about 'incompetent teachers' - a less than satisfactory teacher, well managed, will muck up a year's work for some kids. No excuse for it, but that's as bad as it gets. Incompetence in the city- totally ruinous and destructive.

It makes me sick! The incompetence and stupidity there, and then people bitching about workers in the public sector.

As a taxpayer, I'm pretty fed off at having to have bailed out the banking sector, tbh.

Xenia, wow I disagreed with you before I even knew what you'd written that time!! A record!

I have been thinking about all the arguments on this thread and elsewhere for days, it is so interesting.

I also don't believe in 'no cuts' but these politically motivated cuts just appal me, especially since we have money for wars, bombs, bailouts etc.

I hate all the rabid DM style benefit bashing and demonisation of the poor.

It seems to me that jobs are the answer to many ills- the discipline, regularity and self respect work can give (doesn't always). But where are the practical and manufacturing jobs? Industry? And elsewhere, jobs are being cut in the public sector but the private sector is not there to pick up. Three million unemployed does not seem to me to be a 'price worth paying' for anything. And low paid, short term, agency based work is just crap- for the small amount you'd be better off on benefits, what is the point? That's not an argument for cutting benefits, btw it's an argument for work to be better! That's how the crisis in banking has really fucked everyone over- companies going to the wall= no jobs, plus cuts in the public sector = no jobs. But work is fundamental. I think the state has to provide work in these circumstances - dig a hole, fill it in, dig it again.....

Well the money has run out for a lot of things worthy or otherwise so there is not much point in debating whether some services are worth it or not although I'm sure the taxpayer is a bit fed up of supporting a lot of fairly nebulous pointless things.

I suspect we don't really want a society as in communist russia where the state guaranteed full employment and yiou'd have people who were "in work" but just sitting 6 women in a cloakroom without really any real work to do. The state just doesn't do most things very well. This is not a radical Government and it is not a government with much of an agenda for change so I'm not hopeful but certainly there is a huge lot more which could be achieved.

Sometimes you may not know what the impact of an action was for many years- results may not be immediate. How do you measure? The whole term 'reach out' suggests an offer, an offer that may or may not be taken up. Should you not offer?

Well if the 'reaching out' makes no difference, one needs to stop 'reaching out' for a start.

So how else do you reach people if you don't reach out?

'reaching out'

How fucking patronising.
Some hand wringing Guradian reading leftie in vegan shoes being all earnest.

Rosebud, I have no idea.

In regard to your friend, moondog, why on earth has he stayed for 10 years in a job that he reckons has no successes?

Moondog - I don't think I've used one anecdote you know, I don't know anyone who works in these fields. You shouldn't dismiss entire areas of activity wholesale as you might find that some of them actually work. Outreach work isn't nebulous arwareness raising - it's going and finding people and giving them specific help. You know, reaching out, Out Reach. Nebulous awareness raising is called marketing.

So it would be going and finding men who have sex with men, but are married so don't want to risk buying condoms and giving them condoms so they don't catch sti's and potentially pass them on to their wives, or providing condoms to prostitutes who wouldn't buy them as they need the money for crack, or kids who are living on the streets and won't go into shleters as they are afraid of being sent home etc. etc.

What's a success story?

So not one of his clients has made one positive change in their lives in 10 years.

Yeah.

Yes yes Coalition but it is all touchy feely nebulouis 'awareness raising'.
Public sector workers can spout crap like this until the cows come home but the unpleasant fact remainds that it is not the equivalent of doing something.

As you are so fond of folksy anecdotes, I'll give you one. Good friend of mine works in managerial post for drug & alcohol abuse 'support services'. He will admit when pressed than in 10 years of work he can't recall one success story.

Plenty of 'outreach'. oodles of 'support', acres of 'awareness raising'.
Getting folk off the smack and White Lightening?

Nah.

Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point is an interesting read on widespread behaviour change (a field in which I am involved academically).

Nobody at the time knew for sure adamschic

adamschic since the vast majority of people have had sex without a condom many times it's not unreasonable to suggest we could have all caught HIV.

We were told that the risk factors were sharing drinking vessels and the like, at the time.

Not much in life is really essential, as Moondog said, the world would not stop turning without many of the services and jobs we have now. But some services and some workers make just an enormous amount of difference to people's lives, and it's what we believe is important above air, food, shelter that sets the tone for the society.

A silly example, some of you will maybe say, but I know of at least one school where drama and/or music have just ceased to exist as subjects due to finance issues/prioritising. I just think that's really sad, because properly good drama teaching can just give so much to children and the school, and the same for music. But of course, the confidence and skills given to students in theses subjects don't immediately translate into any kind of financial benefit to anyone and they don't show up in league tables.

We might have done if we hadn't changed our behaviours. In countries where people haven't AIDS rates are much higher.

Not surprised that people are mis-informed re HIV and Aids. I can remember in the 1980's, the ridiculous public information making out that we were all going to catch it.

And that's the problem really - not that art therapist/story teller/reiki healer considers their services to be essential (though I am sure they do) but that users of their services consider them to be essential. If they didn't cuts would be easy.

AFAIK Reiki isn't available on the NHS so I would have thought the only place it's paid for out of public funds is where there are no medical treatments, where it's as good a placebo as anything else. It might not make anyone better, but it makes some people fell better - that may or may not be a good use of funds depending on what you are using it for - it's certainly harder to argue that it provides a RoI in the same way as outreach work.

Considering that there are large sections of the population who believe thata HIV has been cured and isn't anything to worry about any more, there seems to be plenty of room for Outreach workers to find some low hanging fruit.

"Three decades on since the beginning of the HIV epidemic in the UK, knowledge about HIV is still worryingly low among the general public. Research into public knowledge and attitudes to HIV, commissioned in 2010, reveals serious gaps in knowledge of HIV.

The survey, conducted on our behalf by Ipsos MORI found:

One in five adults do not realise HIV is transmitted through sex without a condom between men and women
Only 30% of adults can correctly identify, from a list of all possible routes, all the ways HIV can and cannot be transmitted
An increasing proportion of adults incorrectly believe HIV can be transmitted by impossible routes such as kissing and spitting"

www.nat.org.uk/Our-thinking/Public-understanding/Public-attitudes.aspx

Moondog - the point with the aids outreach work is that the benefits are so high in purely monetary terms that even a very low success rate would be cost effective. it seems so likely that a worker would not have ONE success in fifteen years that I didn't bother to look for any figures.