The big society

[newwave]

Has anyone heard Dave mention the big society or we are all in this together lately? Then again he may have just influenced society to come together albeit they appear to be protesting against his policies and his rich "mates" greed.

One worry I have is that next summer the more "radical protesters" will be burning and looting shops in a High Street near you after all what need do you have to hold back if you are young with no future you have very little to lose. If I could I would suggest to them that if they must indulge in looting shops and burning homes then maybe Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Mayfair should be their destination of choice. Unlike Tottenham I doubt that the Police would sit back and let the rich burn. Better still give them a future, hope and jobs, then again we have a Tory government so that is unlikely as creating unemployment and hardship for those at the bottom is hardwired into their DNA.

no actually i disagree, i dont think i should go out and volunteer because services are being cut.

no thank you. i will not support this idea of big society, it is bullshit and everyone and anyone who works in the Third Sector knows its bullshit.

Not just libraries - most museums are staffed by volunteers. The one I scab volunteer in and where I am doing my work placement module for my degree course, has 180 (!) volunteer staff ,and about 10 (very poorly paid and very highly qualified) salaried employees.

And Custardo, they are not just MC/retired types. Many of those scabs are students and recent graduates and post-grads (of ALL ages, including ancient student me) and middle-aged recently redundant folk who are absolutely desperate to get work experience to put on their CVs.

Have you seen all the stuff in the media recently about the exploitation of these so-called "interns" ? Loads of companies are keeping afloat these days (especially in the so-called " creative" industries") thanks to unpaid labour.

I'm totally in favour of getting work experience, but 6 months unpaid full-time work in central London is only within the reach of the wealthy, and/or Londoners. And having parents who are willing/able to sub you for B&B in your 20s or beyond.

ffs seriously wondering why people are choosing to be contrary for the sake of it.

'Have you seen all the stuff in the media recently about the exploitation of these so-called "interns" ? Loads of companies are keeping afloat these days (especially in the so-called " creative" industries") thanks to unpaid labour.'

Yes. I've seen reports about them. Even political parties were reported to use unpaid interns. There was a report of foreign doctors desperately seeking work as unpaid interns to build up their CVs. It's incredible that nothing is done about it. What do unions say about it?

Custardo - sorry, but I think you are the one who is currently incomprehensible, unless all you were doing was just stating the obvious: that closing down libraries is about saving money; that libraries are more likely to successfully close down in poor areas; and that this is a bad thing. But you gave the impression that you don't like MC people doing anything about it, with your comments about the "Green Welly" brigade - or was that bit just gratuitous(ly offensive)??? Or did you just mean you agree they should fight against it, but then accept it when it happens anyway, but said it in a way that was accidentally offensive????

newwave - it really is a mistake to call people scabs rather than misguided. A lot of these people are people who want these services to stay open and view them as essential and do not think that all communities are capable of or should be organising such things for themselves, not people who don't care about what's happening outside their own community or who automatically agree with what is happening - they just need more time to realise that those at the top really are so greedy and immoral that they never, EVER plan to do anything to help them in their aims. But don't worry, if the most powerful, wealthy global corporations, institutions, leaders and individuals keep behaving the way they are, people like that will eventually stop desperately running around in their hamster wheels and say enough is enough - but the consequences of that won't be that all the nice librarians getting their jobs back. It's more likely to be that people start helping those at the top to trash everything, including the essential services and labour that the wealthy themselves rely on, so that they have to suffer, too (although, of course, it will still be the weakest and most vulnerable who suffer most from the instability, as they will probably die from the cold when the heating's turned off and hospitals close down...). And when the chaos comes, you don't want those with a gripe against the big corporations, institutions and individuals who failed to understand the effects of their own greed, fighting each other, rather than fighting together, because they are too stupid to get over who wears green wellies and who doesn't. Unless you want to maintain a state of chaos, rather than ever have libraries again...

The next move will be to require all unemployed people to volunteer in libraries before they can collect their jobseekers' allowance. They will then be allowed to do jobsearches on the library computers during their lunch breaks

This, well not this exactly, but making unemployed people volunteer for their benefits is already happening

rabbitstew Wed 02-Nov-11 06:17:19 Custardo - sorry, but I think you are the one who is currently incomprehensible, unless all you were doing was just stating the obvious: that closing down libraries is about saving money; that libraries are more likely to successfully close down in poor areas; and that this is a bad thing. But you gave the impression that you don't like MC people doing anything about it, with your comments about the "Green Welly" brigade - or was that bit just gratuitous(ly offensive)??? Or did you just mean you agree they should fight against it, but then accept it when it happens anyway, but said it in a way that was accidentally offensive????

Another argument for arguments sake, delving into the minutia. clearly it isn't obvious to others who think the Big Society is a good idea. I;d rather be blatantly obvious and clear than someone who argues for the sake of it.

i never stated that Mcs shouldn't do anything about it. This is how you have chosen to interpret it. If you read it again...and subsequently when i explained to you further on...again this should make it more clear to you.

I am rarely accidentally offensive. If you have taken offence at the term 'Green Welly Brigade' then you captured my tone entirely.

Custardo, for someone who claims to like being blatantly obvious and clear and not starting an argument for argument's sake, you have a very odd way of going about it. Your below comment is as clear as mud, because you don't make it blatantly obvious and clear who you think the "green welly brigade" are:

"jolly well done you green welly wearing army stepping in and giving back to the community. the @MC community.

the poorer areas will suffer."

Your silly, rude comment copied above certainly gives the impression that you include EVERYONE who fights against a library closing as being part of the green welly brigade. Or, as I asked earlier, do you mean only the people who go one step further than complaining and campaigning against a library's closure, and when the only option left is to volunteer there themselves in order to keep some kind of service going, actually do that? If so, why pick on that tiny group of people and sneer at them????? They are often the same people who tried to stop the library closing in the first place. Or are the green welly brigade the people who wanted to library to close so that they could volunteer in it????!!! I'm not sure I've ever met someone like that. The mind boggles trying to understsand your "blatantly obvious" meaning.

'The Big Society is for the little people who need to rely on each other to keep safe and warm

It's really not

As I said before we have had no input from the so called local community initiative. It runs by nominating people from neighbours etc (alongside sending volunteers on contracts they have got from social services etc- managers making a hefty £ by all accounts though that's just village gossip).

Because ds3 and ds1 are educated outside the village as all Sn kids needing input are, nobody even realises they are here.

Also, after the way they have been treated in the community- some of the volunteers are the same ones who called their DH's to give me a bollocking so nasty it caused me to suffer PTSD as I was genuinely petrified he was going to attack me in front of then small ds3 and newborn ds4, and also the ones who launched a campaign to get ds3's TA taken away as their NT children deserved it equally (ds3 was non verbal and in nappies aged 6 when it happened) and even now still mutter that ds3 should not be allowed to attend school at all if it means their taxes funding transport (as none of the boys can attend the same school ds1 and ds3 travel by bus and I take ds2 and ds4. I would have loved to be able to send the boys to the local primary alongside their siblings and mates).

So really these people, or any organisation to which they are linked, caring for my boys even for an hour respite? Like hell.

Big Society isn't really IMO best achieved by the bigger stuff- some things HAVE to be done by trained accountable people who actively want to be there. Big Society to me is offering to take the child to school with yours from someone you know has to rush off to work, something i did today; poping around with sweets for the ASD kids you know can;t trick or treat much becuase you are bice, like my neighbour did yesterday.

That could be because the little people are also small minded, Peachy. It doesn't mean they don't need each other, just that so many of them don't realise how much.

perhps rabbit

but equally it means that relying on The Little People inevitably equates to throwing certain people to the wind.

An awful lot of people find it easier to feel empathy for a pensioner ('just like my Mum') or indeed a cute small disabled child (though not from what my carer friends tell me) than someone in their teens or older with LD, someone with a MH issue, or a drink one.

Big Society is possibly at the core of how I try to live- a Quaker ethos- but sadly it has the potential to be used as a weapon against those who don't fit in, or even by the very nature of the choice that is obviously essential in volunteering those groups less attractive or those jobs less fuzzy-sounding.

Very easy to be tempted to be a library assistant after all: sounds like my cup of tea tbh. providing respite for an aggressive teen? nope.

There is also the issue of reliability: I worked as a volunteer manager before and before that for another charity running committees and it was inevitable that volunteers on occasion were not so reliable as paid workers. Most were bloody fab, but come holidays / school snow closures etc you were going to get the drop out rate. I'm aware of at least one county looking for volunteers for it's Sn school transport: are those people really going to be reliable at 7am in deepest January? Some yes but how many? What about delivering a meal to the elderly lady on Boxing day if there is no enforced rota?

Of course some will feel that the benefits in saving outweigh the costs to those who don't get the services or reliable help they need, I despise the view but that's their choice I guess. However, personally whilst I feel like Big Society is absolutely nothing new and just the Government taking pwnership of what most of us try to do anyway, I so think that this whole initiative is the absolute opposite of what it should be about.

I do think the beneficiaries won;t be those most needy, I see this in evidence elsewhere- power suppliers for example have been asked to change their coail tarriffs to a new two, one is the elderly poor, the other is self defined but already according to related charities close to turning away very needy famillies because the money in the 'other' pot is incredibly limited, so whilst pensioners benefit (and I don't have an issue with this) disabled people for example won't. Somewhere deep inside there is a suspicion that people have divided into 'like me' (I will get old one day) and 'not like me' (I am not disabled / have no MH issues/ can resist a drink) and that neediness is being divvied the same way, encouraged by a hefty dose of daily mailism (some of the stats they are using in their anti disability campaigns are absolutely false and I can show you a breakdown if necessary to back that claim up WRT one recent so-called scandal expose).

A final issue is trust: sorry but why would I allow my extremely vulnerable child to be cared for by someone who didn't choose the role or bother to get proper training? Nah, no chance. I can't take that sort of risk.

So- in summary- involvement in society yes: being told you have to or services that people need close, or if you don't accept help from people you don;t trust you lose everything- not a hope.

You're preaching to the converted (or should that be peaching?). Of course The Big Society will leave the less fragrant out. And of course unpaid volunteers will think they're being nice enough already to be at most reasonably reliable. And of course volunteers will tend to pick things that interest them most or which maximise the feelgood factor whilst minimising the personal sacrifices. That is the privilege of being a volunteer - you pick and choose and can genuinely say you can't help everywhere at everything. People do not tend to offer to volunteer for things they don't understand, feel uncomfortable with, disapprove of or feel made unsafe by - it's forced labour if they are made to, not volunteering. There have only ever been a very small number of people who have been capable of taking the thousand steps further to devote their lives to what others write off as lost causes without a second thought. And of course that's why the State needs to step in, because if people are allowed to take a pick and mix option on what they contribute towards, then they will leave some of the most genuinely vulnerable out, because they don't like them, don't understand them, don't want them anywhere near them, hope they'll cease to exist if they are ignored for long enough.

Ah no, not so much preaching (or peaching LOL) but randomly venbting to spar Dh LOL

im not wasting my time on wilful misinterpretation becuase you clearly haven't read what i have written

Oh Custardo, once you've had to accuse several people of wilfully misunderstanding you, the penny ought to drop that you haven't expressed yourself in an understandable way. I'm think whatever you actually meant I might have had some sympathy with, I'm just not sure what it was.

(or should I say, for the sake of clarity, accused more than one person either of wilful misinterpretation or choosing to be contrary for the sake of it).

The only person i am accusing is you dear. Please do read what i post instead of wilfully misunderstanding/misrepresenting

Ah, so you weren't accusing LapsedPacifist of choosing to be contrary for the sake of it, then, despite the fact that comment of yours came immediately after his/hers. You really have proved yourself incapable of making clear who or what you are referring to with any clarity, dear. You are just a rude, offensive person who avoids clarifying their muddy waters by blaming others for not understanding. Either stop wasting your time being rude and accusing others of not understanding you, or explain yourself so that others can understand you. How many times does someone have to set out in black and white that they really don't understand you before you accept they are not wilfully misunderstanding you.... dear?

Is it really that difficult to define "the Green Welly Brigade"??? I would have thought that could have been done in a couple of lines, rather than wasting effort getting cross with people who clearly don't have the same understanding of the term as you do.

"accuse several people of wilfully misunderstanding you,"

was your statement. ironically enough, you wilfully misunderstood. singled out the word 'accuse' and carried on with yourself in an argument for arguments sake debacle.

no green welly brigade doesn't need defining further than my description in my post. Its not difficult - just unecessary

Yawn.

i win

It's a shame to see you two arguing over this.

I am middle class, have a pair of green wellies, but am not part of a brigade.

But I do know some greens who are part of a brigade - the green wally
brigade.

they are quite different from the green walliams brigade

Oh, Custardo, why are you wilfully misunderstanding me? (And I answer peoples' questions, rather than telling them I shouldn't have to and I don't think this is some kind of silly competition to "win" - that's just so much the competitive attitude of the green wally brigade...).