... to think the gov can eff off if they think I'm going to do voluntary work?

[woollyideas]

I'm really fed up with reading about this hypothetical army of volunteers who will run our libraries, patrol school crossings etc., etc. as part of the old Big Society thingmy. AIBU to think that if I was to be made redundant due to government cuts, I would prefer to lie in bed a bit later than usual, write, paint, read, bake cakes, stick two fingers up to the Condems, etc., after 30-odd years of working? Or do you think I should just pop along and be an unpaid slave happily work for nothing in a local school or something worthy?

What would you do?

'Many fruit and veg farmers would tell you they would like to employ local people, but no British person wants to do the job.'

More like no British person wants to do the job for the under minimum wage they illegally pay all those Eastern Europeans.

It's also a well-known fact that many of these farmers won't even entertain employing a British person.

Why would they when they can get Stanislaw and Jolente to do it for £3/hour?

the idea of 'workfare volunteering' has been around for some time and will be much applauded in some quarters, no doubt. i'm curious to know who is going to actually organise this [mess]- which entrepreneur is writing their business plan right now or already has it?

expatinscotland - There is a legal agricultural harvest hourly rate, most workers earn more than this, as there are bonus's for how much you pick. It is usually about £7 an hour.

It is hard work though, and quite monotous, but saves on gym membership.

There where roads built/laid in somerset during the great depression of the 1930's this work was done by men on the dole - I have no idea how it worked or was organised but the roads are useful.

I think part of the idea which lay behind my suggestion was that if librarians (who after all are trained, and do provide a specialised service) are to be replaced by volunteers, then surely some of the MPs roles/functions could equally well be replaced by unpaid staff. After all if we are agreed that some of the "less pleasant" jobs such as caring, rubbish collecting etc should really be financially rewarded (especially if done by people with no other source of income), then the money must come from somewhere. I'm not expecting the cabinet to work fulltime for nothing, but a day a week unpaid would be a nice gesture...

Well, isn't this the way DC expects Big Society to function?

'expatinscotland - There is a legal agricultural harvest hourly rate, most workers earn more than this, as there are bonus's for how much you pick. It is usually about £7 an hour.'

Yes, legal being the key term.

yes the 'we're all in it together' message is not being awfully convincing as things stand, is it?

I spent a good few years as a volunteer at the CAB but without the computer support, premises, managers, training, phones, insurance etc there would be no CAB to volunteer at.

These cost money for which local CABs (which are charities) rely heavily on Local Authority grants. The Tory government cuts funding for local authorities, local authorities cut their charity's grants (as after all they have bigger priorities)and bang there goes the CAB's funding.

Conclusion - The Big Society is a big load of bollocks

they are probably using that distinctive logic MPs use: 'I am an MP. It is very difficult to become an MP (you have to get elected dontcha know!) therefore I must be brilliant. Therefore I could be earning millions working in a bank, therefore the fact that I am an MP rather than working in a bank is doing you all a favour. In fact, I have therefore effectively already donated to you the work to the value of £450 000 a year that is the difference between my paltry MP's salary and what I could be earning as a banker. So I don't know what you're complaining about, proles!'

"would they also be willing to volunteer cleaning shit off of the arses of the elderly and disabled? how about to counsel drug addcited prostitutes or rehabilitating youth in the criminal justice scheme?"

Years ago I read some very interesting research (Daly.. I think!)as part of my degree (social work) that looked at low levels of abuse in residential and nursing homes.

What the witnesses found was...... low paid staff who were poorly trained, low on skills and intellect, low on aspiration and many didn't want to do the work. In some institutions it was found that senior staff led the way on bullying vulnerable service users and that newer staff simply followed. Many staff resented the "servile" nature of the work and took this out on the people they cared for.

Just imagine how much worse this low level abuse, how much more widespread when "conscripted unpaid labour" is added in.

Until fairly recently many low paid job vacancies within the care sector remained difficult to fill. Even with the advent of the minimum wage and NVQ training most people believed this type of work was below them.

Even fewer "real" volunteers will come forward to do this "servile" or what is percieved to be low status work.

And I though being an MP was volunteering to do your bit for society These greedy over stuffed pigs are there for the power and the glory.

Many people already volunteer there time to worthwhile causes, not for a knighthood but because they want to help others.

MPs are there for the perks, pensions and the chance of a peerage.

Volunteer? When I got made redundant a few years ago my new job was... getting a job. 9 to 5, 5 days a week. I only stopped when I got a job didn't have time to swan about doing other stuff.

"I also think an awful lot of us will think you've taken my cb,my forests,my libraries,are hurting my kids schools,have made family life harder with your high inflation if you think I'm bailing you out by volunteering you can f**k right off"

This is me, I feel that they don't value me or my family in any way so they can sod off. I was doing a lot of voluntary work before I moved about 6 months ago, and have not started doing any in my new area (ironically most of the stuff I did was things the council 'should' have been paying for, we were rewarded by a party once a year, much cheaper for them but I bet the party is off this year).

Chances are I will stop feeling angry in a year or so and go back to it, that's if I'm not back working if we are very skint.

Where I volunteered there were a few people who were just annoying and it took more effort to manage their efforts than you got value from their work IYSWIM.

DH was unemployed for about 3 months last year. I am a SAHM, obviously I started looking for a job as well as soon as we found out he wasn't going to be working. But my job market has vanished so that was fairly hopeless.

He was on the phone/internet/on trains off to job interviews every single day.

I know not everyone is like this. And I think job 'creation' is a GREAT idea. For the long term unemployed, but at at least minimum wage just to get people some experience and stop them going mad at all the rejections. As well as help stimulating the economy a bit - much better to pay people an actual wage to pick litter and have them able to spend in shops than no wage to do the same and have no spare cash.

Shame the new government's scrapped it eh?

Round here they have single mums doing 'voluntary' work in Sainsburys! I would bet the government are paying Sainsburys to take them on, Sainsburys are getting free labour and it means there are no paid jobs for people who need them.

WTF is that about?

Volunteering in places that need volunteers is one thing but a multi national, uber profitable business?!

The big society my big arse.

are they really tfMDV?

Sainsburys?

That's shocking but all too predicatable.

For once I agree with Mrs Thatcher...

"There's no such thing as society..."

and surely there ain't no such thing as the Big Society...

Does lord Sainsbury pay to have breakfast with Dave.

When I was on the dole they tried to force us into voluntary work to help with our prospects of getting a job (yeah right). I flat out refused to be a free slave in Woolworths, Parcel Force etc.

instead I kept demanding to work for charities I've worked in many charity shops and in an Animal Home cleaning up the shit of 160 cats everyday and I'd rather to that then be a slave to a company, it's a joke.

They demanded once that I work at WHSmith and I couldn't get out of that one so ended up spending 4 weeks cleaning up a mouse infested stockroom, sorting all the DVD/games and CDs out into alphabetical order on shelves that where languishing in boxes and chucking out boxes and boxes of VHS stuff, all on my own, not a sole in sight all day.

Now as they want the unemployed JSA claiments to do more slave work with the welfare reforms forcing them to do community work (Street cleaning in place of sacked council workers?) where are all these other volunteer positions to come from, who would have thought it wold be the Cons who put a communist system in place.

I ain't volunteering for shit, I only work for money or decent charities.

This thread as restored my faith in MN

Fuck off with your slave labour Dave