The Big Society

[rabbitstew]

(I think I've found my forum, now - posted this just now in Education...). Does anyone else think that David Cameron's idea of "The Big Society" is just his utterly cack-handed was of trying to say that the emotionally resilient should do a bit more to help the emotionally poor and needy (ie understanding the concept that all people in society are occasionally extremely needy and deserving of support, not just the generally inadequate)? I agree with this idea, I just disagree with the method of trying to carry it out - it takes too much responsibility away from the State. And, of course, the attitude of the City, whose workers are supposed to be among the more emotionally resilient, doesn't help foster the right attitude. Apparently, different rules should apply to them - they don't have the time to volunteer in this way, because City workers are just so self-importantly busy making money, nor do they want to donate money to the State to help it in a worthwhile project. They would rather keep all the money to themselves, or pick and choose their own pet charities, rather than getting involved in any sort of common cause. (Behaving like a group of capitalist cats...).

Which leads me to think that the political parties are not poles apart at all - they just disagree on the numbers in society who genuinely need support and how many of them can actually cope with being told to "pull their socks up." ie at least the "Big Society" rubbish is an attempt to show that the conservatives are not totally autistic (unlike the City).

I would be happy to pay more taxes. I feel guilty I don't pay enough - until I think of all the people above me who pay accountants to show them how to avoid tax, and then I just feel trapped because I don't have enough money to be so selfish and resent those who do, but don't realise that others view this as selfish rather than sound financial management.

We'd also pay more taxes for a fairer society; within a few years we expect to be HR taxpayers and we still would.

That would be the ultimate Big Society but completely opposite of New Right ideology of course.

How much does the way society has developed - so that we now feel we need two incomes coming in to have a decent life and many people are bringing up children alone - affect our capacity actually to volunteer in the way most of us know we should if we want a better place to live in? It seems to me that some of us genuinely are so incredibly busy trying to look after ourselves and keep up with the Jones's (which is not actually that unreasonable, as too much inequality is a very bad thing) that we haven't the time to think about anyone else. I don't think there is an army of people out there who do not have to put huge effort into paid work and therefore have time to put huge effort into work without monetary profit.

Is it not about people just putting in a couple of hours a week to help improve the community in which they live. I think most people do have that time to be honest.

I do a fair bit of voluntary work and so does DH - I was commenting to him this mornings that what we do in our 'spare' time is starting to sound more and more like what people are forced to do on community service. I am not sure what that says about us.

The problem with leaning on volunteers is that provision becomes whimsical and more about people feeling good they are volunteering than the actual service provided. Nobody wants to do the really difficult, filthy, unrewarding stuff, and we don't have religious orders on every street corner prepared to step in any more. So it needs more than this.

byrel, I would definitely be happy to pay more taxes in order to fund better services.

"Is it not about people just putting in a couple of hours a week"

There are all sorts of problems with that. The first, as MsLucy pointed out is that a lot of social care work & other things provided by taxes need skilled workers to be done well.

The second - as I'm sure you will have experienced yourself if you have done lots of voluntary work or community organising - is that it really is the same old faces time & again.

The third, is that a substantial proportion of those same old faces will definitely have their own agenda, and it won't necessarily be about providing what people want.

The third is that in a lot of places people are really struggling to provide for their families already, working very long hours for low wages, and they really don't have the time or energy to then go out & do another job when they get off work. (Hence the same old faces problem.)

Plenty of others - which is not in any way to say that volunteer run activities are not fantastically valuable & important - but I just don't see them replacing lots of social spending right now.

Sorry about the two 'third's

The other thing to bear in mind is that if you want an activity to happen, then

a) someone has to use their time do it, and
b) the concrete 'stuff' needed to make it happen has to be bought or otherwise provided.

There are three options -

option 1 - we all work at our own jobs, generating goods and services, pay taxes on the money that we earn, and then pay someone to do the work for us (and then they can buy the goods and services that they need). Our elected representatives decide what services are the most important, and therefore what will receive tax money.

option 2 - we all either spend less time working on our own jobs generating other goods and services, or have less leisure time, and spend some part of our working hours doing social care activities. Individuals decide what services they consider valuable, and providing they can get together enough others to make a viable service, they give their time / resources to make it happen

option 3 - said social care activities do not occur.

I just look at the current situation where the Government is spending fortunes (far more than we raise in tax) into public services. Tax rates are already quite high so do we really want them higher, do you want to see VAT at higher than 20% or a raise in the rates of income tax or national insurance on people in order to pay for even more state provision of services.

Apologies for all the lists, I seem to be in listy mode today.

I guess my post above begs the question, would you rather pay more taxes and pay someone else to do these activities, do them yourself, or not see them done.

Personally, I would rather pay more taxes, because I feel that I'm already doing as much volunteering as I feel able to do whilst running a business and having a family.

Also I don't feel that I would be that good at providing respite care and support for autistic children & their families - just for example - given that I am a vegetable grower, and know nothing about child development etc.

And I am well aware that at some point in my life I'm very likely to need social care services, and I would rather they were delivered effectively by someone who knew what they were doing.

Well, byrel, as far as I can see, since inconceivably vast amounts have been given to the banks to bail them out and therefore there is a shortfall in public funds, either I need to pay more taxes, or do more voluntary work, or see services being cut.

Actually, I think this cartoon sums up my take on it all.

Takver, I entirely agree that we are up against those three options. I have found myself getting more and more drawn in to the voluntary work I have started doing, to the point that all this chatting on mumsnet means I am waking up in the night and getting on with working out how to volunteer effectively and make a contribution in the early hours of the morning. I can clearly see that the role I am beginning to create for myself could easily be a full time job, but I don't want a full time job, I like the fact that by volunteering, I get to decide when I'm sufferin burn-out and I can give up. That is just not an effective way to run State Education, Social Services, the Health Service, etc, etc, etc. So we must pay sufficient taxes to support these services properly.

I wonder: is the hidden agenda of many conservatives the view that society would be a better place if men did the paid work alongside unmarried women without children (whom they would of course not patronise for "not having found a husband"). The married women should stay at home to care for their husbands and/or children and would then have the energy also to volunteer for good causes and help out in, eg, schools - highly effectively, of course, because women are given access to good education these days and are even allowed to do paid work until they get married. And of course, it wouldn't be at all odd for unpaid women to be helping out paid teachers who may actually be less good at their paid work than the volunteers are at their unpaid work. And of course it wouldn't result in women ending up with less of a say in how our country is governed economically, so that we are only given a say in the social care side of the argument.

Life is so confusing! I know I do value hugely my ability to concentrate on my family and offer up my expertise on my own terms by volunteering for my chosen projects. It really does create in me a great sense of community, because I have the leisure to appreciate my community and get involved in it. I'm really not sure a whole society can be governed on that principle, though.

And, since where our country is at the moment, we are more or less forced to accept as much voluntary work as possible, how do we get people out of the attitude that they don't want to be the one who jumps first?! (Which I guess goes back to my outrageously provocative comment on another thread about bankers voluntarily paying back their bonuses!!!!).

I think I am saying, I am scared that I am being duped, and that actually my current goodwill and desire to work very hard to help us get out of this mess will not be a temporary thing at all, but will end up being the way society is run.

Maybe we should all and always just muddle along and never develop any clear policies! Then no-one can accuse anyone of a hidden agenda!

Argh- typed hideously long response to byrel and then PC crashed!

Ok so what I wanted to say was that we can't seriously argue that we cannot afford what we already provide becuase clearly there isn't enough as it is: take a browse through the Sn section some day: every single bit of help anyone gets is fought for. I would argue that it is often far harder to deal with the bureaucracy in getting the very basics- school place, therapy, respite etc- than dealing with the disability itself. Cut back any further and people's lives are ruined,, absolutely.

More importantly, it's a false economy.

OK so take my family: Dh is fairly low earning atm, building up a business. I am a post grad studying graduate willing to work but unable to find childcare for 2 / 3 / 4 disabled kids depending on what happens with ds4 and how you define disability for d2.

So imagine the state decided to provide access to a Sn provision for chidlcare.

I work; we stop claiming Carer's Allowance and Tax Credits. Win win, a massive chunk of cost of provision already covered. Then you look wider- early intervention is proven to improve long term outcome, so if you invest ££ in early input you should see £££ saved long term. Famillies in poverty are more vulnerable to incredibly expensive health care costs, housing needs, crisis interventions (mental health in particular). The educational attainment of any NT siblings is likely to be reduced, along with their lifelong tax paying contributions, by poverty: we know that. Add in the tax paid by anyone working in said childcare provision, the caretaker of the building, teh grovers that provides the snacks....

Starts to become obvious that sensible well applied intervention generates cash for the state doesn;t it?

Except.

Where you get the problems.

how is it funded- council budgets. Who saves the money from benefits etc- Government. Already tehre's a mismatch and one cash strapped council isn;t going to spend money cleverly to save the arse of the government it sees as depriving it of the resources already. Then you have a system where even within a council areas compete: the education dept will not pay for early interbvention to save adult services money. they all watch their own budgets, nobody elses.

Big problem tehre.

And it's all so long term as well- we know it works, plenty of evidence for all i have mentioned, but a Government thinks election to election by nature.

As for voluntary services- if only. but it won't work. take the NAS Befriender service: a wonderful scheme. A volunteer takes someone with ASD for a few hours a week, helps social skills, the feeling of being part of the community, gives carers a break....

or in reality the person's carers apply to the scheme then person sits three eyars on the list as there are no volunteers out there.

Likewise the HomeStart scheme I worked on: great scheme, proven to save SSD money- IIRC it was every £8 spent on us saved SSD £80 nationally or somesuch. Except we had no volunteers, so our service level agreement was breeched, and the scheme was closed.

The asnwers 8are somewhere buried in this mix and Big Society in terms of community values is part of it- it's one* part, just one.

Santas- The point is we can't afford what is currently provided as we have been running a structural budget deficit since 2003 in order to pay for everything. Although this deficit has grown rapidly during the recession it existed before the recession.

'Can't afford' is a value judgement, Byrel. As a country we could easily choose (as many other European countries have) to pay more of our national income in tax, and have a higher level of services.

As a country, our public spending as a % of GDP prior to the financial crisis was a little below average for the EU.

Raising taxes is of course an option open to the Government Takver but I was responding to Santas argument that we shouldn't be arguing over whether public services are affordable or not. At current levels of tax they aren't hence why we've been running a deficit for so long.

The Big Society is women doing even more unpaid work than they already do. I've just come back from the school's winter fair- where I volunteered- alongside an almost exclusively female volunteering team. we do the lion's share of the housework and the childcare, unpaid, and now we're supposed to replace social services as well, for no money. I am a single mother and get no money from the ex, i work to support 2 Dcs, I study so I can earn enough money in child-friendly hours in future, i make the bloody bake sale cakes and buy the raffle tickets. I haven't got time to run a school, and I could use a sit down and a glass of whiskey cup of tea now and then. I expect to be extremely poor as a pensioner and I plan to take pills or take an unsteady walk along the cliffs when i start to dodder. So Cameron the millionaire can sod off.

No Byrel IMO the point is we could spend less and do far more if anyone who ahd an ounce of sense ever amde it to Government, yet AFAICS no party seems to get the very basic rules of where to spend in order to save.

And you know- telling people we can't afford is all weell and good but when I die someone has to care for ds3, and if I can't work then I can't pay for it. Unless we want the severely disabled homeless and starving anyway.

'I was responding to Santas argument that we shouldn't be arguing over whether public services are affordable or not.

you were not as I did not make that argument. I argued that the current systrem of departmental budgeting encouraged a culture pf people set to protect their own pennies without any eye on the effective way to make long term savings. Spent wisely teh current budget would achieve far more, and perhaps we could get by on less.

Unless- what's your solution for the disabled, unemployed, sick etc? Do we say 'Oi over there unaffordable' and forget them? Could you? I couldn't. In actuality i;d rather we went under as a country desperately trying to protect the most vulnerable than abandoned them. 'Course I'd prefer neither, naturally.

Getting back to the original question, I think people should volunteer their time or money when it is appropriate for them to do so. There are times in our lives when we have a bit more spare time (eg. the stay at home mum who volunteers at church or playgroup, or the gap year student, or even the pensioner) and I think people should do more to contribute to society during these times.

On the other hand, I think it is fine for the city banker to put off these activities while working 60 hour weeks and bringing up families. As long as they are willing to give the time or money at other times in their lives. IMO time spent means so much more than bunging a few pounds to a charitable cause. And there will always be lazy uncaring people who will never donate either. It is these people that I think should be made to think about the 'big society'. The bankers have nothing to do with it all.