forthwritten (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
forthwritten) wrote2011-02-22 02:59 pm
forthwritten) wrote2011-02-22 02:59 pm
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This government scares me
David Cameron to end 'state monopoly' in provision of public services
And speaking as someone who has done volunteer work, it's really really important to have committed people. Someone doing a couple of hours here and there is great, and I've done stuff like that - redecorating a women's refuge, helping with a community garden, picking up litter - but usually you need consistency and a time commitment from volunteers. You can't run a library if all you have is a few people willing to do a couple of hours here and there when they have time; you need people who can commit to a rota and say they can definitely do Thursdays 3-5pm. If you have people relying on you, you can't treat volunteering as a little hobby - it becomes more like a job. That's why people get paid to do these things.
However, the following article argues that "volunteering is a red herring. The big society is really about replacing universal public services with a postcode lottery". While we're getting angry and focusing that anger on the big society, Cameron and his party have been quietly getting on with something else.
David Cameron's 'big society' may seem a big joke – but don't be fooled
David Cameron is to "completely change" public services, bringing in a "presumption" that private companies, voluntary groups or charities are as able to run schools, hospitals and many other council services as the state.NHS turmoil is just the start of Tory ideology run wild
Writing in the Daily Telegraph about the plans, to be published in a white paper in the next fortnight, the prime minister says he is seeking to end the "state's monopoly" over public services, with only the security forces and judiciary exempt.
Democracy will scarcely get a look in. People can't choose if services are contracted out. Once contracts are signed, nothing can change. You can throw out rascally councillors or governments, but the contracts will go on regardless. Like PFIs, they will be traded as financial instruments, sliced and diced according to risk and sold on. This sets a nuclear bomb under all public services, because there can never be any going back. If you don't like the sound of this, Cameron's government can be voted out but it will be virtually impossible to return services to a public realm that no longer exists. Ownership of the contracts and companies moves on, and the public sector loses any capacity to take them back.Like many people who've spent time volunteering, I don't think charities taking over public services can work. To quote from a comment I made elsewhere, I don't think that individualised philanthropy works as a system - it certainly hasn't in the past - and that's why people introduced state welfare. You just have to look at medical charities to see why it doesn't work - dementia research and mental health research are underfunded because they don't affect cute children and aren't flashy enough. Look at Victorian ideas about the deserving and undeserving poor and how they still resonate.
And speaking as someone who has done volunteer work, it's really really important to have committed people. Someone doing a couple of hours here and there is great, and I've done stuff like that - redecorating a women's refuge, helping with a community garden, picking up litter - but usually you need consistency and a time commitment from volunteers. You can't run a library if all you have is a few people willing to do a couple of hours here and there when they have time; you need people who can commit to a rota and say they can definitely do Thursdays 3-5pm. If you have people relying on you, you can't treat volunteering as a little hobby - it becomes more like a job. That's why people get paid to do these things.
However, the following article argues that "volunteering is a red herring. The big society is really about replacing universal public services with a postcode lottery". While we're getting angry and focusing that anger on the big society, Cameron and his party have been quietly getting on with something else.
David Cameron's 'big society' may seem a big joke – but don't be fooled
The media's obsession with volunteering has obscured the bigger picture. If we look at what the prime minister is actually saying and doing, volunteering isn't especially important to the big society. Of course Cameron approves of it, everyone does, but none of the hundreds of millions being used to float the big society is ringfenced to encourage volunteering. Instead anything up to £300m has been made available to a social investment bank to provide capital funding (at market interest rates) to "social ventures"; while £100m goes to a "transition fund" that will assist those charities losing existing contracts with local authorities.I don't think I have the words.
The real voluntary sector has little to do with this. Directors of smaller voluntary organisations and charities live in terror of debt and are often constitutionally barred from taking it on. Only organisations expecting very high turnovers will find this useful. Cameron has not raised an army of volunteers. He has launched an armada of service provision companies.
Volunteering was only the third prong to the big society mentioned by Cameron in his Observer article. The first two were "devolving power to the lowest level so neighbourhoods take control of their destiny" and "opening up our public services, putting trust in professionals and power in the hands of the people they serve."
What does this mean? These sentences have attracted little attention, but combine them with the bank and the transition fund, and the true purpose of the big society becomes clear. Neighbourhoods now have the choice to pay to have their own park cleaned, their own library or leisure centre staffed, even their own streets patrolled by private security guards. They also have the choice as to who should be providing these services once state or local authority provision has all but gone.
[...]
If taken to their logical conclusion, these policies mean that affluent neighbourhoods can have all the amenities they want, the best living environment, the best services, without having to share their council tax payments with the poorer people down the road. Less fortunate areas will fester for lack of cash. Then, when they do, this can be portrayed as their own choice and their own failure. "So you couldn't pay for it?" the voices will say: "Then why didn't you just volunteer like we suggested?"
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I'm not sure turning us into the US is the right term - there's a different history of trade unionism, labour movements and welfare here for a start - but our governments do seem to be treating the UK and US as sandboxes for their neoliberal agenda.
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Yeah, I live in a town where the hospital is run by a private Roman Catholic charity.
This has meant, among other things, that I have repeatedly been subject to unwanted pregnancy tests before I was permitted to receive medical care there. I honestly can't see why one would want private organizations running hospitals if one had any other alternative at all (we now drive to the secular for-profit hospital in the next town over whenever we can -- and it's not like they're any ethically better, but they seem slightly less inclined to view my uterus as their property.)
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Ugh, that's just so awful. Medicine is NOT the place for religious ideology.
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Frankly, i like paying taxes so that i DON'T have to ruin myself by getting over-extended with volunteering. Also, by paying people to do things, you improve their competency and skill at doing it.
I also have some thoughts about who HAS the time and energy to volunteer as a part/full-time job, and what kind of volunteer services would they be wanting to offer, but i'm not sure where they're going.
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This, exactly. It's what having a state is for.
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Yes, that exactly. I do some volunteering but I already have a PhD that threatens to take over my life and this year I've started to get firmer about saying "no".
I also wonder about the distinction between volunteering and work (as neatly stated in http://www.shouldiworkforfree.com/). If you're willing to do something for free, it makes it harder for you, or someone doing a similar job, to argue for pay in the future. Volunteering isn't just about not getting paid for doing something now, it's also about still not getting paid for it in the future. And sometimes it's fine to volunteer, but there's a point where it becomes unpaid labour and kind of uncomfortable. I don't trust human nature enough to be confident that all voluntary work is automagically non-exploitive.
And, as you point out, it also affects the kind of person who can afford to do that in terms of time, finances and energy.
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Me too! I enjoy volunteering, but I have a PhD, a job and a not-very-cooperative brain to factor into everything. Unless we get everyone organised into a structure, with volunteer-managers and dedicated support teams it doesn't work. And oh! What's that? That sounds like the definition of the state? Funny that.
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Do you mind if I link to this on my LJ? You have said everything I have been thinking, better than I could have said it.
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I don't understand why either - I'm sure if I read enough neoliberal economic theory it might make a bit more sense, but ffs, this country is not a sandbox for a reckless experiment.
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Think of it more as a heist on a national scale.
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One thing we can try to do is get to London for the TUC rally on 26th March. For people who can't, spreading awareness, distributing leaflets, etc, all part of making stuff happen.
I don't want to get overly carried away about any single protest, but we need to make a very public point. This needs to be like Stop The War. Sure, Blair dismissed it, but he threw away most of his credibility at that point by his refusal even to listen to voters, and he's never really recovered. The STW march has become activist legend. A concerted response which cuts across all sections of society is what we need. I don't wan to refer to the poll tax, because riots are definitely not a good thing, but it needs to be made clear to the coalition government that they're attempting to act without a mandate, and that really isn't on.
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I hope very much that your PM isn't too...inspired by ours.
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May I link this 'round?
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And yes, I think that's one of the most distressing things about it. The government didn't just wake up one day and think "oooh, free-at-point-of-access healthcare, old age pensions, disability living allowance, university grants...what jolly good ideas, let's introduce these". People fought for years and years and years for access to these things because the old way of doing things didn't work, and now these precious things are being stripped away. It makes me so angry and so sad.
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