The Guardian has interspersed its continuous high pitched whine of ‘cuts, cuts, cuts – the world is coming to and end’, with endless articles over the past few days – and by endless I mean four or five major articles each day, sneering mercilessly at Cameron’s notion of a ‘Big Society’.

Journalists, Guardian variety, have been heard muttering at press conferences, ‘I’ll go and do a stint as a brain surgeon, see how they like that’, and that attitude that anything more taxing than second tea pot re-filler at the village fete can only be carried out competently by someone employed, trained and regulated by the State has carried over into their articles.

Take Jackie Ashley’s patronising idea of volunteering:

Those who stand for the council or raise money at church fetes for a social centre; charity workers sorting and pricing old DVDs in a shop; Brownie pack leaders and hospital volunteers – all are big-society people, driven by a variety of motives including ideology, faith, guilt and loneliness.

Volunteers are untrained, uninsured, uncommitted, and unprofessional, they say; it really isn’t fair that citizens should be forced to reply on this rag, tag, and bobtail army – the vulnerable will suffer, people will get fed up and desert their post – ha, ha, ha, just look – Nat Wei, the Big Society Tsar is the first to throw in the towel, how they gurgled with delight over that one!

Never a positive word.

We were talking about this last night, and Mr G reminded me that the RNLI is a volunteer organisation. He should know; in common with every other fit young man who took to the seas from the fishing village he grew up in, he was a volunteer lifeboat man. It would have been unthinkable not to be – when the maroon went off as they all stood sharing a yarn and a pint in the local, how could you have faced your friends and neighbours if you were not racing down to the slipway with the others?

Young fishermen have always taken to the dangerous waves on a stormy night to help their neighbours – it is little more than 180 years since they were even formed into a formal organisation to allow subscriptions to be raised to pay for properly equipped boats – to this day the crew are unpaid. Have you ever heard the Guardian or any other left wing organisation campaigning to have lives at sea ‘saved’ by a professional state run organisation? They wouldn’t dare.

This prompted further thoughts – how about volunteer firemen? Every small community in Britain has its quota of volunteer firemen; it is only in the big cities that it is recognised that it would be impossible to earn a living elsewhere, given the number of call outs, that the firemen are fully employed and thus properly paid. Are lives at risk because they are volunteers? Would anybody dare suggest that they are?

How about those people on DLA who will apparently be ‘trapped forever’ in their care homes if Cameron dares to take away their personal motability allowance? Have they never come across the army of people who help them into and out of their own transport and onto wherever they wish to go – the community transport programme?

The Red Cross, St John’s ambulance, Samaritans, Meals on Wheels, all providing essential and highly qualified training to their army of volunteers – scarcely devoting their time to ‘sorting DVD’s in a charity shop’.

Those poster children of the far left – the homeless, battered wives, drug addicts, abused children; all are serviced by an army of volunteers.

Even allowing for the fact that some of these generous souls may be volunteering to more than one organisation – you are still talking of many hundreds of thousands of skilled individuals saving lives, enabling meaningful lives, doing utterly professional jobs. I have never heard any politician or journalist campaigning for these jobs to be paid for by government, or undertaken by public sector employees – do correct me if I am wrong.

Yet suddenly there is terror in left wing circles that, shock horror, Cameron’s Big Society might mean volunteers emptying the bins, caring for the flowerbeds in the local park or swabbing the hospital floors – and they couldn’t possibly be trusted to do that, could they?

All those Guardian readers out of work, no more public sector ads in the classified……

What could it all mean?

John Levett February 16, 2011 at 11:24

Anna – I think one of the unspoken problems here is that many of the
successful voluntary projects mentioned – RNLI, the voluntary fire service and
Engineer’s railway – all involve (mainly) men doing the sort of things that
men like to do: they involve heroism, life-saving or working with magnificent
machines. Swabbing floors or emptying bins doesn’t have the same
attraction!

Besides – and this was one of my major concerns when the last Tory
government introduced Care in the Community – how do the displaced floor
swabbers and bin men earn a living?

And why is is that only relatively poorly-paid jobs are in Cameron’s
sights? Why don’t we return to the days of volunteer politicians and
councillors? Why don’t we insist that all quangos are voluntarily staffed? Why
is it that senior suits need massive salaries and bonuses in order to
retain/motivate them but cleaners only need the satisfaction that comes from
cleaning up blood, vomit and piss?

Anna
Raccoon February 16, 2011 at
11:33

“how do the displaced floor swabbers and bin men earn a living? ”

Picking carrots,
Collecting cockles,
Labouring on the various
Olympic stadiums,
Any of the jobs we are constantly being told that ‘dem
immigrants’ is stealing…….

John Levett
February 16, 2011 at 19:10

So floor swabbing should be voluntary but not picking carrots etc?

Dennis
February 16, 2011 at 20:52

Either way, provided sufficient patissiers (sp) volunteer, there
should be no cause for concern.

Furor Teutonicus
February 16, 2011 at 09:30

XX Yet suddenly there is terror in left wing circles that, shock horror,
Cameron’s Big Society might mean volunteers emptying the bins, caring for the
flowerbeds in the local park or swabbing the hospital floors – and they
couldn’t possibly be trusted to do that, could they? XX

“Trust” does not enter into it. I have no problems with volunteers doing
ALL that.

BUT the poll tax payer is paying through the fucking NOSE, supossedly so
“proffessionaly” do these jobs.

WHEN, for every volunteer, the lower the poll tax rate, then it will be a
good idea. Until then it is just a scam.

PLUS, If you can not see the parallels between these Government approved
“volunteers” and Maos China, you must be blind.

Jabba the Cat February 15, 2011 at 23:12

Dizzy has a rather amusing tale of Polly Toynbee and help in the local
community
http://dizzythinks.net/2011/02/polly-toynbee-does-lambeth-walk-out-of.html

Engineer February 15, 2011 at 21:30

About thirty years ago, a group of lads got together with the hare-brained
idea of reopening a closed and lifted length of railway line. They persuaded
the line’s owner – the local council – to give them a lease, they scrounged
materials, they mended and painted buildings, they laid tracks, they rescued
and refurbished scrap rolling stock, and in due course, they ran trains.
Today, they have seven miles of railway, twenty full-size steam locomotives,
several stations, engineering facilities sufficient to overhaul their own and
other peoples’ locos and stock, and a turnover of a million-and-a-half a year.
They are the second-largest employer in their home town, but all the directors
are still volunteers, and all the trains are operated by volunteers. Much else
is also done by about two hundred regular volunteers. They are the toast of
the local Chamber of Commerce for the tourists they attract to the area, and
both local and regional government take them very seriously.

Not bad for a bunch of nutters.

(P.S. So far as I know – and I’ve asked – none of them read the
Grauniad.)

Livewire February 15, 2011 at 21:26

After a slight faux-pas on the previous thread I’ll switch off the inner
clown and give it some gravitas.
I think if you get enough people there
will be sufficient skill to cope with most situations.
The neighbours here
include engineers, medics, teachers, academics, carpenters etc.

Reading the Subrosa blog, she describes her struggle to get her broadband
working again. She risked over £100 on a new router which happened to solve
the problem, but she had almost spent an extra £90 to get the line checked.
Purely through training and experience I would have found the fault fairly
quickly (‘scope at key data points).

Having said that, Subrosa would have skills that I don’t have, in
particular trying to comfort someone who’s in emotional distress. From
previous experience I know that I would unintentionally make things worse if I
said anything in that situation.

So the gang of helpers would be specialists, hopefully with an overlap in
skills so that the sum is greater than the individual parts.

ukFred February 15, 2011 at 21:23

I don’t seem to recall any squeals of horror from the Guardianistas when
the TA were called up to fight on trumped-up evidence for a certain Mr. B-Liar
in Iraq. Or is it OK to have someone who is not a full time professional
killed for your demi-god’s ego.

Hysteria February 15, 2011 at 20:25

Dave H “maintaining a police force, emptying the bins and fixing the
roads”

Well – one out of three ain’t bad I guess. Where I live (USA) the bins are
collected by a company I pay for – I get two collections a week, the crews are
cheerful, RUN between the houses, help to move large objects and on Fridays
also collect all my recycling (not sorted – they do that back at the plant).
Compare and contrast to my “service” in Scotland and, well – there is no
comparison really.

I pay around 20GBP per month ……….

Roads are maintained by contractors in the main – not employees of the
state – I think that is true in the UK as well come to think of it…

I guess I know what you meant – the state needs to limit itself to those
things that it is inappropriate (for a variety of reasons) for private
individuals to do. My list would be Police, Foreign Affairs, Defence and ,
erm, that’s about it actually…

By the way Ms Racoon – good analysis in the article!

Hysteria February 15, 2011 at 20:26

and Justice I suppose……but even then I reckon some privately meted out
justice may be more effective than others – but I gues that’s a whole
different kettle of fish.

wassname February 15, 2011 at 20:03

I hope people will look further than politics. The big society idea is
apolitical whether or not David Cameron is peddling it, and is simply an
attempt to encourage people to wean themselves off the teat of the state
because it’ s clear that 13 years of progressive socialism, both words
together code for future fascism, has taught people only to hate not care for
or more importantly, about each other’s freedoms. Look, but look!

Ian R Thorpe February 15, 2011 at 18:58

When I think of those weirdos and oddballs who used to serve on the council
unpaid and often did not even claim their bus fare, and I’m thinking of two
old friends and political opponents of mine here, former Conservative MP Ken
Hargreaves and long time Labour councillor Jack Grime, both thoroughly decent
men and totally committed to the idea of public service, I just find it hard
to understand why in these days when a very comfortable living can be made
from simply being on the council (not to mention the graft and payola) we no
longer seem to be able to find men of their calibre for the job

Blue
Eyes February 16, 2011 at 09:24

Perhaps because in those days there was real responsibility and a real
chance for the “weirdos and oddballs” to change their home town. Power is so
centralised, with the best will in the world local councils have very little
chance to change anything.

When power is handed back to local authorities, the career councillors
will start to screw things up because they are useless and normal people
will get sufficiently hot under the collar to get involved again.

Michael February 15, 2011 at 18:29

Public spending is rising.

Dave H February 15, 2011 at 17:55

The main problem I can forsee is that in five years, if we get the other
lot back in, all those volunteers will need to be checked and regulated by a
new army of civil servants equipped with a large amount of red tape.

Government is there as a convenient way of maintaining a police force,
emptying the bins and fixing the roads. At the moment they only do one of
those at all well round here, and in some places probably none of them.

Carol February 15, 2011 at 17:37

Mountain rescue is another volunteer service relying on donations. The
BBC’s Snoddy was tweeting disparaging remarks about the big society. More and
more people rely on the State to do things for them it’s sad really. Healthy
and fit people moaning that their paths haven’t been cleared of snow – do what
I do clear it yourself.

Sandy February 15, 2011 at 17:27

Well written and observed as always. Luckily no-one reads the Guardian, so
as its ad. revenue and readership dwindle away it will gradually disappear
before our uncaring eyes, ;eaving the Morning Star as its readers’ only source
of Fabian tosh.

Michael
Fowke February 15, 2011 at 17:26

I’m not a lefty, but this Big Society thing is a load of nonsense. The fact
that it is Cameron’s vision makes me hate it.