TUC National Demonstration Against Cuts

[OrangeBernard]

Who's going? I've just booked my train tickets. Its my first protest, any advice or tips? Bit worried about kettling.

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.

Nobody at the time knew for sure adamschic

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).

What's a success story?

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

Yeah.

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.

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

'reaching out'

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

Rosebud, I have no idea.

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

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

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 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.

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.....

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

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

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

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.

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.

Wook, I agree whole heartedly with you about the redeeming qualities of work and the fact there don't seem to be many proper jobs left. I suspect we will all end up as amorphous blobs, bent permanently over laptops, tapping out 'toolkit's and 'frameworks', wittering about 'stakeholder engagement' and breaking off occasionally to suck at a big foamy milky drink in a cardboard container.

What a shit life.

Maybe the real workers will become the new elite-people who can cook and garden and mend and build?

I can't agree with your airy dismissal of the effect of a poor teacher on a child however.
'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'

A ppor teacher can fuck up someone's life permanently. I've seen it myself. In the words of one of my heroes, Vickie Snider (an educational commentator and academic) there is more redress in the States for selling a bad hamburger than there is for ruining someone's life chances.

The phrase 'the money has run out' actually makes me want to sit in a corner and weep.

In the context of global economics, this statement is so shallow and vapid as to be completely meaningless but gets trotted out again and again as, as what? some crude attempt to provide an economic justification for political and ideological decisions? I dunno. Either that or just something to say.

I see no signs of the money having run out in some quarters.

moondog I did say there was no excuse for it! Not an airy dismissal. A crap and/or lazy teacher makes me as cross as anyone. IMO, though, it's bad management at middle and top levels in schools that allows those situations to develop or continue, And I still argue that unemployment, social inequality and deprivation do a LOT more to fuck up someone's life chances- therefore the incompetence of the bankers is further removed but far more pernicious. Oh, and as if the shutting of libraries isn't going to ruin people's life chances!!

And to think Coalition exhorted me ages ago on this thread to ne "nice" to types such as moondog. She's evidently embittered and incredibly meanspirited as most rightwingers happen to be. I say: Darling reach out!! And I'll be there!! Etc etc.

Thanks but no thanks Glasnost.
I'd rather sip a cheeky little Chianti with Polly Toynbee.

Actually, incompetence in the City isn't likely to have any serious effects. There are a lot of people in the City, at any one time a large number of them are fucking up. The Banking crisis was a systemic failure brought about by perfectly competent people realising the model they had been following was wrong (or at least incomplete).

I'd rather a perky little Brunello di Montalcino with Polly meself but I'm a Brunello bolshevik.

Glasnost - I don't think I've been even slightly unpleasent to moondog.