Liverpool council is pulling out of the Big Society pilot run but the LibDem controlled Sutton borough council in London is sticking with it:
http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/8832509.Sutton_Council_to_stay_in__big_society__as_Liverpool_withdraws/

Good article.

I am perhaps more surprised that Liverpool council was foolish enough to be sold the odious kipper in the first place – it’s not like anyone ever thought the ‘Big Society’ was a good idea, and certainly not in this city…

1. Provision of help or relief to the poor; almsgiving.
2. Something given to help the needy; alms.
3. An institution, organization, or fund established to help the needy.
4. Benevolence or generosity toward others or toward humanity.
5. Indulgence or forbearance in judging others.

Sunny, your concept of charity is a perversion of the meaning of the word. Charity is something, time or money, that is freely and and altruistically donated. This exercise is a fundamental expression of our common humanity.

For government hijack the concept by using it to further a narrow wealth redistribution or social agenda is to deny us opportunities to be better human beings.

I’m sorry, but a charity which gets it’s funding primarily from the government is NOT a charity. It is demanding taxpayer money as a right and obligation, rather than earning it through donation based on its actions.

Why should I be forced to donate moeny to a charity the government chooses for me, rather than one I chose myself?

As is typical with a lot of Sunny’s Fabian logic, he believes that government and the left wing elite know best. I omit the word “liberal” from my descripton of the Fabian left, as a true liberal would believe the individual has the right to make their own choices on the matter.

@ 3 Pagar

Well said.

“Every single head of any voluntary organisation or charity is screaming that their sector is being decimated. This isn’t hyperbole, it’s true.”

Actually, it is hyperbole.

@3 Why is it that we need an increase in those going without so that others can be encouraged to give? It’s like demanding more to be lame so you can prove that you’re a decent human being by assisting them.

Sunny, you’ve completely misunderstood what the Big Society is about. It’s not about state-funded charity groups at all, but rather encouraging people to come up with a vision of how they want their local area to be, and providing support for the achievement of their vision. I know that’s anathema to statist Labourites, which is why you’re so determined to reject it: http://declineofthelogos.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/labour-phronesis-and-the-big-society/

Pagar and Tyler.

It was immensely predictable that you lot would focus on semantics rather than challenge the substance of the argument. We’ve discussed the issue of charities doing government contracts or getting core funding numerous times. The fact of the matter is that cuts are effecting these organizations that carry out vital front line services – and this doesn’t change whether you want to call them charities, quangos or whatever. The fact that many of them were doing a service better and cheaper than would have been the case had the public sector tried to do the same service in house (which is why many ended up obtaining funding in the first place) is also lost on you.

Also you might like to bear in mind that many private sector grant giving bodies and donars have also struggled in the recession, so arguing that these organizations can simply replace their government funding with outher income sources is also unrealistic.

Tyler, I know it pisses you off immensely when people who don’t work in the city make comments and suggestions about what to do with the city that are obviously not informed. You might like to bear this mind when you make comments about a sector you know little about.

I’m sorry, but a charity is not a charity if it totally depends on taxpayers’ handouts. If you want money to run your charity, go to the high street or supermarket and rattle a tin. Note that it is ‘taxpayers’ money’ (and loads we have borrowed as sovereign debt); it’s not ‘government money’.

On the other hand, Sunny, I would agree that the Big Society is total and utter nonesense. In our village we have a big society. We all join in; we raise funds to repair our village hall; we organise pantomimes; we have a youth club with 40 members; we have an active church; we look after old and vulnerable people; we run people to hospital who haven’t got a car (no public transport here) … etc. We do all this not because Cameron says so, but because we have always done it. We don’t get – and we don’t want – any taxpayers’ handouts.

Why should I be forced to donate money to a charity the government chooses for me, rather than one I chose myself?

This is a good question. The answer is, I think, that the government should be looking to spend taxpayer’s money in any way that gets a large return (of some sort) such that the benefits exceed the costs. Directing government money at charities can be a very effective way of doing that [1]. A bit of government money combined with the voluntary efforts of people like Sunny here (charitable in the sense pagar defines, can deliver a lot of bang for the buck. I think you can also make a case that having a state that assists charitable effects is a good thing for fluffy social reasons too. Destroying an existing network of state-assisted charitable activity to save a relatively small amount of money looks like a dumb move to me.

The nature of taxation is that it is revenue obtained by coercion, determined by ability to pay not by usage of tax funded services, and that more or less the only say you get in how it is spent is via the ballot box. This structure allows the government to do things that the private sector would struggle to do – it expands what’s possible. Now having money taken off you against your will isn’t a good thing, but if the benefits are large enough, they may compensate for this drawback. Trivially, if having £x taken from you each week by the state did something amazing there’d be no debate. So although plenty of people like to think about the principle of the thing, I’d argue that’s misguided – it’s a pragmatic question, about costs and benefits.

Lots of idiots on the right completely ignore the scope for tax payer funded government spending to do very many worthwhile things, and just obsess about how their liberties are being steamrolled and their money taken.

Lots of idiots of the left completely forget that the state is taking money out of people’s pockets, ignore the costs, see only the benefits, and never encounter government spending they don’t like, so long as it is wrapped up in worthy sounding intentions.

[1] of course it can also be a tremendous waste: we have to think about what happens on average, and put whatever system in place we can to try to manage funding allocation to raise the average.

oh I wish that edit function was still here – sorry for all the typos

@8: “Sunny, you’ve completely misunderstood what the Big Society is about. It’s not about state-funded charity groups at all, but rather encouraging people to come up with a vision of how they want their local area to be, and providing support for the achievement of their vision.”

For compelling political reasons, Sutton council has to cling to the notion of the Big Society as the unavoidable alternative after this council decision:

“The closure of Sutton’s only specialist care home for dementia sufferers would be catastrophic for the borough’s elderly residents, according to research by a community organisation.”
http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/8816704.Care_home_closure_to_be__catastrophic_/

It’s another case of: Of course, it’s sad about Fred but no one had volunteered to cover that day.

Sunny,

You aren’t involved in a charity, that is a government subsidised business. Are the people that run this charity paid for their time?

Here’s an idea, get the kids together, give them a collecting tin and go out there and get donations. They’ll learn some useful lifeskills, lose some tension, you’ll raise some money.

Tyler @ 4

Why should I be forced to donate moeny to a charity the government chooses for me, rather than one I chose myself?

Er, the same ‘logic’, you could ask why I am forced to pay money to the arms trade. The Government is giving money to a ‘charity’ in order to buy the services that charity provides. If the charity concerned happen to be the best providers of that service, then why duplicate it by inventing a completely new structure when the experts are all ready doing the job?

You can argue about that services the Governments provides, but that is a different thread, but right now Sunny is talking about a charity that works at a community level to diffuse tensions at local level. Is there a single decent person who thinks such actions should not continue, or that ‘Government of the day’ has no vested in such an undertaking?

TBM @ 6

Actually, it is hyperbole.

Phew, thanks for clearing that up, mate. For a minute Sunny had me going…

The one thing I really do not want to see is this ‘Big Society’ thing go the way of the dodo. I want the rotting corpse of this albatross firmly hung round the necks of Cameron and Clegg. I want them to deal with every hospital closure, every sick or disabled person suffering, mental health issues, you name it, I want to hear them stutter away regarding our failing society and how it can all be solved by a few blokes giving up their weekend to make it all better.

“Its also teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, thanks to funding being slashed at local councils, schools and grant donors. Several other charities and local community organisations in the area have already gone bust.”

If it gets public money, it’s not in the third sector, it’s not a charity.

Charity refers to the spirit in which an undertaking is run, not the spirit in which that undertaking is funded

Tyler and pagar would do well to understand the difference between ends and means, rather than bursting into tears because words don’t mean what they think they mean.

As someone who has run a charity which didn’t rely on funding from any source other than donations (and a grant from Children in Need every now and then), the idea that charities can fund themselves by tin-rattling is ludicrous. Mine was an “attractive” charity, and we struggled to persuade rich people who allegedly supported us to give enough money to hire a church hall and a council minibus every week. Many charities just can’t persuade the general public to fund them – everyone agrees that adults with severe mental disability need help, but almost nobody wants to give money to them. In practice, charities with even modest ambitions need to either get money by trading (which brings on the standard right-wing complaints about unfair tax breaks, competition with the small businessman, etc) or through grants from government and large grant-giving bodies (and the latter will usually not fund running costs – they’ll do capital and start-up costs, but charities are then expected to find ongoing costs themselves).

@AdamBell

The problem for the Conservative led coalition is they can’t tell us what they think it should be, other than some vague ramblings about people getting together to buy a pub, or save a post office or own a forest.

I think you’ll find that the Labour party has been doing this called “big society” for more than half a century.

http://www.wortleyhall.org.uk/page/brief-history

I think you’ll also find that the following words, on every party members card, “By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe and where we live together freely in a spirit of solidarity tolerance and respect”, sum up quite adequately what most people would see as the big society.

who says the charity Sunny is talking about here is 100% state funded?

if you like you can define a charity as an organization that is 100% funded by voluntary contributions, but out there in the real world there are plenty of organizations that have mixed funding.

I’d be Oxfam gets a few quid from the State one way or another? Isn’t Oxfam a charity?

let’s ditch the semantic squabbling

“Here’s an idea, get the kids together, give them a collecting tin and go out there and get donations. They’ll learn some useful lifeskills, lose some tension, you’ll raise some money.”

Ok here is a short charity fundraising lesson 101.

1. Collecting tins. Useful in small stages at raising small amounts. People tend to put lose change in, and if the collectors do it for free you might raise a few hundred quid. If you get a strategic location, such a theatre, you could double that. If you are a small organisation, that money could say – pay for new changing rooms, equipment etc.

2. Chugging. – raises more money if you do it in long term manner, but tends to annoy the public. Only really an option if you are an established brand.

3. Filling out forms for grants. Raises significantly more money and usually the most cost effective way of doing so, but on the downside you need skilled and experienced staff with the ability and knowledge to get the grants – so it isn’t an option for the small community group (although some do get lucky).

4. Contracts fgrom local authority to provide services. Same as the above, with the added disadvantage that you’ll get fuckwits on the internet telling you that you are not a charity if you are succesful.

Put simply, if you think collecting tins is going to raise anything approaching the level needed to even have 1 part time member of staff for your charity – let alone the costs of an office etc – then you are deluded. This is why many of the organisations you patronisingly dismiss as not being charities because they get funding from the taxpayer end up getting funding from local authorities. They usually start as the projects of passionate community activists, but run strictly for fun. Then a local council says “hey – we need to be doing this, but Mr X here already does good work on the ground. Instead of hiring several people on council salaries, why don’t we just throw Mr X 25k to cover a small office and a basic salary. We’ll also send him on a training course in fund raising so that over the years he can expand his operations. It’s 25k well spent”

As Luis enrique says above: “The government should be looking to spend taxpayer’s money in any way that gets a large return (of some sort) such that the benefits exceed the costs. Directing government money at charities can be a very effective way of doing that ”

“Why should I be forced to donate moeny to a charity the government chooses for me, rather than one I chose myself?”

I haven’t chosen to spend my taxes on military spending, the EU, international development, civil service salaries etc. The answer to this is participatory budgeting – not cutting taxes on essential services that almost certainly would be more popular.

“I’d be Oxfam gets a few quid from the State one way or another? Isn’t Oxfam a charity?”

I think it gets some stuff from DFID, but its one of the charities largely funded privately. State funding would probably only be a few percent. Might be wrong though.

But Sunny – Everyone bitterly regrets the demise of the Dodo it was at least a real flesh and blood and friendly feathered creature – not a mythological and benevolent chimera dreamed up at Millbank. A poor comparison?

Anybody want to see what a real charity looks like- an organisation doing fantastic work, totally funded from donations and operated entirely by volunteers.

http://www.samaritans.org/

Don’t forget to click the donate button when you’re on there.

I think it gets some stuff from DFID, but its one of the charities largely funded privately. State funding would probably only be a few percent. Might be wrong though.

You are.

http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ScannedAccounts/Ends18/0000202918_ac_20100331_e_c.pdf

£113 million from the state.

@ Planeshift

Not sure where the city comes into my argument….

…but you totally miss the point. You effectively make two assumptions;

- That government should do everything in society for us
- That taxpayers should have the choice of what to fund taken away from them

I’ll agree that many private sector bodies *are* struggling….because of a recession caused by too much debt. Adding to that debt by increasing government funding to replace private funding might be lovely in your socialist paradise, but in the real world it has to be paid for and that debt interest comes out of other budgets. Spending can’t go increasing forever.

As Chris @ 10 and Mike Thomas @14 allude to, if the charity is totally government funded, surely it becomes a government entity? Do it’s employees recieve pay, or is their time voluntary?

If the former, it can hardly be called a charity, however noble their goals. Their employess recieve renumeration, and so they recieve a benefit for the work they do – not “charitable” in the strictest sense of the word, even if the work they do is considered beneficial to society.

If the latter, then I would describe it as a charity. Sure, charities need funds to achieve goals, but that time and money is given *freely*.

I get the sense here that people are often using the removal of government subsidy for “charities” as a smokescreen. There are significant self interest groups running charities – their very jobs depend on it — and it’s very easy to turn around and threaten all sorts of social ill if they lose their funding and their paid jobs. It’s a bit of a one-sided argument as you can’t prove or disprove what they say, as government funded organistions have an inherent advantage over purely donation based organisations, which explains why the charitable sector has moved more and more onto the governments payroll.

Let me finish by asking a question; if I could take the portion of my tax that goes to pay for “charities” via goverment, and instead pay that directly to charities of my choosing, would you people on the progressive left have a problem with that?

I certainly wouldn’t, as it would give me what i desire – choice. My instinct tells me though that many on the left would have major issues with that scenario as it denies them *their* choice of what to do with *my* money.

Tyler

because of a recession caused by too much debt. Adding to that debt by increasing government funding ..

the debt added to by government spending is government debt – if you think that debt caused the recession, words fail me

Crux of the matter – call it what is fucking well is, regardless of what it does.

If the government funds it, then it is an arm of government in some way.

If it is funded and staffed by charitable donation of time and money, its a charity.

Hiding behind the smokescreen of being a charity gives government programmes an air of independence they don’t necessarily deserve, whislt also giving the government a degree of control it doesn’t necessarily merit.

@ 27 Luis

Sorry buddy, but you’re on my turf now. This recession isn’t called a credit crunch for no reason. To much debt in both the private and public sectors.

Sorry to intrude but whatever the outcome from the above ideological haggle about whether true charities can receive grants from public sector institutions, there is the unavoidable practical question of what exactly is to fill the gap left when a council closes the only specialist residential home that it previously provided for dementia sufferers?

There was, as I understood it, a serious continuing problem of bedblocking in hospitals faced with the problem of discharging patients with dementia.

Btw will the salaries of council chief officers and the allowances of councillors be reduced in consequence of the reduced management responsibilities of councils with the cuts in their public spending? So far, I’ve not read any news reports about councillors voting for cuts in their allowances and reductions in the salaries of council chief officers. Why is that?

Tyler, you dick

http://www.fcic.gov/

According to the Samaritans accounts, they received £350,000 from various public bodies in 2010 – the Home Office, the Scottish Executive, etc. Most of their other donations were from large charitable trusts (the charity commission defines a donation as a gift of money for which the donor receives no return, regardless of the source). Try again, pagar.

I’d like to delete #31

Tyler you are correct, private and public debt did have a lot to do with it, but what you wrote I quoted #27 was nonsense. That’s me done on this topic.

@ Luis

Seriously?

Ignoring the fact your link is a *government* report and is unlikely to criticise government spending, borrowing and debt levels, they do specifically mention “excessive household borrowing” a number of times.

That all said and done, I’m sitting here at my desk watching half of Europe blowing up thanks to too much government debt, and the US hitting its debt ceiling and that is after hundreds of billions of QE. Thats also before even looking at the massive black hole sitting in state pension funds and muni balance sheets.

Like I said, too much private AND government debt.

OK Luis, didn’t see @33 before Iposted at 34.

@34

If the bankers hadn’t been greedy bastards and missold all the private credit in order to package and speculate with it, then there would have been no debt. They got to keep all the money they made while the rest of us get our services cut, but of course as a right-libertarian you’d see that as the winners getting their just deserts, am I right?

Tyler/28: If the government funds it, then it is an arm of government in some way.

If it is funded and staffed by charitable donation of time and money, its a charity.

So, is Microsoft an arm of the British Government? Because the government pays them a massive amount of money for the provision of certain services which they could theoretically provide in house instead.

Or Capita? Tons of government consulting and outsourcing contracts there.

Clearly not. They’re private sector companies which the government has contracts with for the provision of certain services which it at least believes wouldn’t be practical to deliver entirely in-house, who have presumably employed numerous staff solely to deal with their government contracts.

So why’s it any different if the government makes an outsourcing contract with a charitable sector rather than a private sector organisation?

(and note that just because a charity receives government funding to outsource a particular activity, doesn’t mean that the majority of people working on that activity aren’t unpaid volunteers donating their time)

“If the government funds it, then it is an arm of government in some way. ”

If I run a private cleaning company, and win a contract to clean the offices of the council, am I no longer in the private sector?

(the irony of this thread is libertarians and the right have been arguing for decades that public services – when essential – should be delivered through contracts and tendering)

“whatever the outcome from the above ideological haggle about whether true charities can receive grants from public sector institutions, there is the unavoidable practical question of what exactly is to fill the gap left when a council closes the only specialist residential home that it previously provided for dementia sufferers?”

Totally, it says a great deal that the only quibbles we get on articles like this are semantics about “not real charities” etc. Anything rather than deal with the actual issue.

Anybody want to see what a real charity looks like- an organisation doing fantastic work, totally funded from donations and operated entirely by volunteers.

Try the RNLI.

The RNLI’s annual running costs are around £120.2M – approximately £330,000 per day – and, as a registered charity, the organisation continues to rely on voluntary contributions and legacies for income, and receives no UK Government funding.

Out of date, but still accurate I believe.

@ 37:
The government pays Microsoft, Capita et al for specific services to/for the government itself.

I think Tyler’s point (@ 28) is that the government shouldn’t necessarily be funding “charities” to continue their charitable work which would not normally be considered as a service to/for the government.

cim,

So, is Microsoft an arm of the British Government? Because the government pays them a massive amount of money for the provision of certain services which they could theoretically provide in house instead.

Clearly not. They’re private sector companies which the government has contracts with for the provision of certain services which it at least believes wouldn’t be practical to deliver entirely in-house, who have presumably employed numerous staff solely to deal with their government contracts.

I think what you are doing here is trying to distract from the argument by pointing at companies in the strange belief that right-wing commentators might think these are good and charities are bad? Anyway, there is a problem here, which is that the same problems applies to companies as to charities.

Capita may well be an arm of government (at arm’s length…) as it makes most of its money from government contracts. The same does not apply to Microsoft (which actually has very few contracts, if any, but sells products) and for whom the government is only a small part of their market. Likewise there are charities which depend on state funds (from various sources) for their existence and charities which get some state funding but also have other income streams.

I feel exactly the same about Capita as I do about a charity which is almost entirely funded by the state, that they are in effect arms of government (and particular ideologies of government at that), because they are dependent on tax receipts for their profits. This does not make them wrong, but it makes them suspect. And I would personally not allow any company to bid for government contract that had more than say 40% (arbitarily) of its income from government, which I doubt many here would disagree with (creating monopolies around government is getting the worst of capitalism and statism, and is not a market) – why should this be different for charities?

And I would personally not allow any company to bid for government contract that had more than say 40% (arbitarily) of its income from government,

Would make life quite tough for arms companies…

@41 I imagine a company recieving 40% of government expenditure as its income would be closer to a monopoly than a company receiving 40% of it’s income from government expenditure.

In reference to the original post, surely the key way to disprove the Big Society would be to undermine its key argument, which is that the best way to deliver funds and services is not through central bureaucracy but through much more informal networks. I haven’t seen anyone do this, either by showing localism/decentalisation doesn’t work (challenge for Unity or Don perhaps…) or by making a case for centralised state distribution of funds.

As it is, the current system is far from perfect, and certainly takes an interesting interpretation of charity. Let’s take Alchohol Concern as an example of a charity (2010 accounts: http://www.alcoholconcern.org.uk/assets/files/About%20Us/Reports%20and%20Accounts/Annual%20Report%202010.pdf). They received £22 207 in donations in the year to March 2010; in the same period they received from the state (Department of Health and Welsh Government) £842 000, something like 38 times as much money. The Department of Health made an unrestricted grant of £400 000. There are substantial other grants (albeit only one over £100 000 from the Big Lottery Fund) and various incomes as well, but these are not relevant to my current point. Essentially, charity here is determined by the government, spending taxpayer’s money in the way they see best.

So what has happened is that government has decided to allocate money to Alchohol Concern which is equivalent to almost fourty times as much money as the charity has raised from individual donors. I am not saying whether this is right or wrong, but simply that it is clear that such choices are taken centrally and far outweight the local decisions expressed by donations – which suggests that people’s charitable instincts are less concerned with alchohol abuse as deal with by Alchohol Concern than government thinks they should be. Alchohol Concern may be the best way of dealing with alchohol problems in each and every unique area of the UK (my experiences of their hectoring style in press releases and news reports makes me doubt this, but hey, they must do good work with less publicity?), but it seems that this is effectively decided by granting large amounts of money centrally (and centrally within Wales) without any local involvement. I have my doubts that this monolithic, centralising decision making is really the best way to spend money – and no-one seems to be standing up to show that this is in fact the case.

Tim J,

I am not sure that being bad for the arms companies is a bad thing – our current cartel is a bit too cosy for my liking. However, I meant service contracts not buying physical objects (if they are the best value products, we should buy 100% of our tanks or whatever from a single supplier…). Sorry – all I require for physical procurement would be a proper market system.

Cylux,

I imagine a company recieving 40% of government expenditure as its income would be closer to a monopoly than a company receiving 40% of it’s income from government expenditure.

Indeed – but since no company could achieve anything like that level of spending if it could not bid for more government contracts beyond a certain point (at least without expanding in other spheres – and private or charitable sector expertise would be good for any company working with governemnt) this would be a moot point. In effect though, this idea is less concerned with stopping absolute monopolies and more concerned with ensuring a market exists and that companies like Capita cannot combine capitalist profiteering with government inefficieny.

As a number of others have pointed out, the problem with the right wing distaste for those charities which receive government funding, is that many of them operate in “non-cuddly” areas where they don’t have a hope of raising the funds they need purely through tin rattling or tapping philanthropic rich people or applying for (presumably ever scarcer?) grants from non-governmental bodies.

Most charities aren’t ever going to be like the RNLI, or Guid Dogs for the Blind, because people aren’t likely to be as motivated to give to charities working in areas like substance abuse, homelesness, mental health etc.

The problem for proponents of the Big society is to explain how the work of many such bodies will continue if their government funding is cut. Perhaps they just don’t care, or perhaps they just assume it will be done by the public sector instead (altho’ I think there might be a small problem with that at present, yes…?), or perhaps they sincerely believe that the Big Society will provide in an outpouring of selfless localist communitarianism…?

41/Watchman: I think what you are doing here is trying to distract from the argument by pointing at companies in the strange belief that right-wing commentators might think these are good and charities are bad?

I think it’s fair to say that not everyone (left or right) is as consistent as you are on the “arm of the state” issue, and so they view “donations” by the state to charities differently to “purchases” by the state from companies. (My point, of course, is that I don’t see a difference either)

Anyway, there is a problem here, which is that the same problems applies to companies as to charities.

Well, I would agree, but conclude the other way: that it’s fine for governments to outsource to either companies or charities where this is more cost-effective at providing a good service than a wholly internal solution, and the priority should be value for money, rather than preventing any particular organisation from having too much of its income from government sources (which, with shell companies, accounting tricks, paper mergers with unrelated companies, etc. would be very difficult to enforce anyway)

44/Watchman: Okay, but I’m not sure why this is a problem. Let’s assume, that Alcohol Concern is doing work that is not an obvious high priority for the majority of citizens and residents of the UK [1]. Nevertheless, the government, for whatever reason, wants this work done. Given that it’s not a high priority for the citizens, isn’t it better for it to be done for £850k-ish by AC, rather than at a higher cost for the government internally, therefore saving tax money that can either be spent on a higher priority or not collected in the first place?

[1] Which isn’t the same as “unimportant”. Successful – and yes, whether AC in particular is doing either successful or useful work is debatable, but it would hardly be the first government-funded public health initiative that was spectacularly counterproductive if not – public health work is massively important to the country and the economy, but it’s an incredibly obscure topic and somewhat hard to make “exciting”, so it’s not going to be many people’s first choice for donations.

@caroline:

I think you’re confusing not telling the public what the Big Society should be with an ideology that says that the Government shouldn’t tell society how it should look and behave. I also think you’re confusing the State with the common endeavour of members of the Labour Party. They’re not the same things.

I’m pretty relaxed about where charities get their money from, they should be free to provide services like a private company if that’s what they want to do. I am, however, concerned that some of the posts on this thread appear to be saying, “Well, the public don’t care enough about issue X to give money to it, so we’ll have to force them to do it via taxation.” That doesn’t sound like the ingredients for a happy society to me. On the other hand, I have no problem with the Government spending money to inform the public about issue X, giving them the information they need to make up their minds for themselves, as that falls under the heading of education.

Galen10/cim,

You both assume that charities that work in important areas should be funded by government. This may be so – certainly, there is a case that government exists to provide services which would not otherwise be provided. But there is also something very odd about government deciding what areas of charity should receive funding – this effectively takes away the core purpose of charity and makes many charities into arms of government (and therefore vested interests). In simple terms, a share of the tax we pay is going to charities, and is therefore a charitable donation by us without our consent. This does not seem right (never mind the dangers of creating effective charity monopolies such as Alchohol Concern, who act both as pressure groups and adjudicators in political issues – often to the benefit of linked political persuasions). In fact, it seems to be pushing at the boundaries of democracy a bit, in that the state is deciding what charity the voters support, rather than the voters themselves. And if you think the state rather than the voters has the best knowledge of what needs to be spent, fair enough. I have yet to see a convincing argument for effective state deployment of resources myself.

This is not to say somethings do not need doing – providing support for alchohol abuse for example – and that the government may not need to spend money on this at some level. Just that by making the decision to allocate funds to certain charities centrally (and without parlimentary debate) not only is there a lack of democratic accountability in many charities (put bluntly, how many charities that depended on popular donations would go round campaigning for alchohol price rises and the like, which affect the vast majority concerned negatively), but there is no provision for small local organisations to fit in – and indeed, there is clear incentive for the large charities to absorbe or marginalise smaller organisations. If nothing else, this creates a dependency situation, whereby the charities are reliant on government for their continued operation whilst the government has no
obligation to the charities and can cut them loose at any time – effectively meaning charities have to do as government wishes.

You can defend this all you like by saying it is providing vital services. But the key point of the Big Society (and of my idealised vision) is that we should not have everything determined by men in Whitehall meeting ladies who are employed to run big charities, but rather by finding the solutions which work best locally. Who knows, Alchohol Concern may well be able to offer good local solutions (I have my doubts…) but I am not sure that just assuming this will be the case is ther best way forward.

48 Adam Bell

“I am, however, concerned that some of the posts on this thread appear to be saying, “Well, the public don’t care enough about issue X to give money to it, so we’ll have to force them to do it via taxation.” That doesn’t sound like the ingredients for a happy society to me.”

So what IS your recipe for a happy society then? It seems to many who thing the Big Society is deeply flawed concept, that it signally fails to answer basic questions relating to how the provision of the services currently provided by such charities will be continued.

Assuming you believe that such services do need to be provided (and I accept that some on the right don’t), if charities currently providing services collapse due to withdrawal of government funds, what do you think will happen?

Either the services simply don’t get provided, or government will end up picking up (some?) of the attendant costs of the services not being provided. Sometimes this might represent a “saving” to the public purse, and sometimes it might actually cost us more, either because specialist agencies were more cost effective, or because the costs of mopping up the mess are higher than preventing it happening in the first place.

Either way, if you think that’s a recipe for happiness, you haven’t though about it hard enough.

49

Your idealised vision looks frighteningly like a recipe for you to cherry pick where your taxes go. I happen to share a measure of your disquiet about charities being used “in loco parentis”, but probably come at it from a different ideological perspective.

The problem with your bucolic, localist vision is that it just won’t work. How are “local” institution going to have the expertise, knowledge, equipment etc to deal with the plethora of problems currently dealt with by the combination of government and specialist charities? If you don’t believe AC can provide local solutions, but you don’t want government taking your tax money to do the work currently done by AC centrally….. what would you actually DO?

I think the bottom line is that right now there exists a network of quasi-charitable organizations, part-funded by the State, and that while the work that they do is no doubt of varying cost-effectiveness and what they do is of no doubt varying justifiability as government expenditure, most would agree that as a whole these organizations are doing good work and their elimination will do damage, in some cases hurting people who are most in need of help.

So, the question is, is Big Society intended as a replacement for these organizations or as a complement?

If the latter, it’s hard to justify broad based cuts in this sector, and if the former, it’s hard to justify broad based cuts in this sector without some basis for believing alternative organizations will spring up to fill the gap.

“surely the key way to disprove the Big Society would be to undermine its key argument, which is that the best way to deliver funds and services is not through central bureaucracy but through much more informal networks”

Would it be sufficient to note that, even if this is the aim of the Big Society, these informal and local networks are being harmed and in some cases destroyed by the speed and scale of the cuts?

@36 Blue

MIs-selling? Last time i checked it was governments taking on too much debt, and private individuals taking on too much mortgage and credit card deb thanks to too-low interest rates. You obviously forget the banking industry paid for much of Labour’s massive spending spree through it’s taxes.

@ 37 and 38

You miss the point – those are companies and service providers. They DON’T call themselves charities.

@ 46 Galen

True, some of these “charities” are’t cuddly and wouldn’t oterwise get enough funding, so essentially become government run. In that case, call them what they are – government organisations and programmes. Or private contractors.

Not charities.

Doesn’t mean they necessarily should be cut, but they shouldn’t hide behind the air of untouchable legitimacy being a “charity” gives them. There are some of these charities out there which don’t give good value for money, achieve little and are terribly run – not least because their focus changes from creating awareness and doing a good job, allowing them to raise funds, to lobbying to get more cash out of the government.just ask Will Hutton.

Watchman makes an excellent point at 49 about democratic accountability. Many excellent points actually.

Galen 10,

Your idealised vision looks frighteningly like a recipe for you to cherry pick where your taxes go. I happen to share a measure of your disquiet about charities being used “in loco parentis”, but probably come at it from a different ideological perspective.

Ah, therein lies the key difference between your and my viewpoints I think – I’d prefer the money not be taken in tax in the first place if at all possible thanks. At the moment my living expenses and taxes mean my charitable donations are limited to events, raffles and fundraising by myself. That the government is meanwhile spending money on charities on my behalf seems rather odd to me – I’d like to be able to do charity myself.

Be interesting to know what your disquiet is then though, as I would not be so sure we are that far apart ideologically, even if the underpinning is markedly different.

@31…don’t delete it, keep it. Weather you right or wrong, at least thats true.

54 Tyler

The trouble with the democratic accountability angle is that what it effectively means is that people like (resumably from the logic of your posts) you and watchman would be happy to see some charities disappear when they have their government funds cut.

So what is your answer to the question about who actually provides the services, particularly in areas you, or other Big Society folks, don’t like your taxes going? Do government provide them directly in a democratically accountable way, do we simply not provide the service at all, or do we simply leave them to their own devices and say; “Sorry chaps, people don’t really care, they’ve given all their time/effort/money to the RNLI/Guide Dogs/Home for Despairing Liberal Democrats”?

55 Watchman

“That the government is meanwhile spending money on charities on my behalf seems rather odd to me – I’d like to be able to do charity myself.”

And you’d solve this how exactly? By paying less taxes so you could devote more of your own money to only those charities you favoured? Uh huh.. in an idealised world, fair enough. Meanwhile, back in the “real” world, that isn’t how it is done, nor is it likely to be….. chiefly because, you know what….? Lot’s of people in the same position will give sod all to charity, or send it all to the Cat’s Home. We’ll end up with very well provided for cats, just you wait and see.

As for the poor, huddling masses…. well, perhaps the Big Society can provide them all with bikes… or work houses…?

Don,

“surely the key way to disprove the Big Society would be to undermine its key argument, which is that the best way to deliver funds and services is not through central bureaucracy but through much more informal networks”

Would it be sufficient to note that, even if this is the aim of the Big Society, these informal and local networks are being harmed and in some cases destroyed by the speed and scale of the cuts?

No – because that is the result of dismantling a centralised system of control (cuts are either by central departments, or as a result of a cut in central government funding to local government). The argument you are making there is that cuts are harmful (technically accurate – although it implies that the dependencies created by the previous high spending are also harmful), which is totally seperate from the actual idea of the Big Society (actually proponents of the Big Society as presented might argue that it will step in to fill the cuts vacumn, but I’d suggest we need either huge immediate economic prosperity or tax cuts for that to be a viable possibility).

It seems disingenious (and below your normal standards) to try and argue against an idea (however ill-formed) on the basis of fiscal measures not considered part of the same programme and which were, however you look at it, forced on the current government by the previous government’s spending: that is to say neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats (nor any sane party (this need not include the two previous examples)) would have coutenanced continuing to spend money above the amount earned at such a rate: basically, only those parties with a statist agenda could see this as a good move. You are trying to judge another party’s policy using the ideology of the previous government’s spending plans as a baseline.

@54

Yes, mis-selling. Particularly in the US where there was a deliberate policy on the part of financial institutions to sell riskier credit options and mortgages to people who could actually afford more stable options in order to boost the yield of the CDS that the product would be bundled into. This was larceny on a grand scale and had far more to do with the financial collapse than any government debt.

Government debt is not inherently a bad thing, and any attempt to compare it to an individual holding on to credit card debt, or indeed to compare it to any kind of personal finance product is a deliberate obfuscation of what is involved.

The debt boogieman is being used to justify cuts that are unnecessary other than in the eyes of the wealthy, who believe that they deserve to keep their ill-gotten (i.e either inherited or effectively stolen) gains, and that the proles have had it too good for too long and deserve to suffer according to their status.

Hah, some of the comments about ‘this is not a charity, its a state funded handout’ – is what I mean by ideological Tories having little clue about how the real world works.

Here’s an idea, get the kids together, give them a collecting tin and go out there and get donations. They’ll learn some useful lifeskills, lose some tension, you’ll raise some money.

Yes, because that’s how care for older people, youth services, local libraries etc should be funded right?

Well, I’m glad that Osborne is listening to people like you – the tanking approval level only gladdens the heart of people like me

Sunny, you’ve completely misunderstood what the Big Society is about.

No Adam – I may have misunderstood what David Cameron was referring to, but I’m talking about the real Big Society here, not the imagined land that the Coalition is trying to conjure up.

Galen,

The government should be providing for the poor huddled masses if they need provision. What you seem to be saying is that the state cannot provide without the charities.

Oh, and to answer you query to Tyler, of course I am happy to see charities disappear. They do it all the time – as voluntary organisations this is generally a pretty painless process. I think you have failed to grasp the distinction between the provision (which if it is necessary should be provided by government, perhaps through a charity or a business or a church or a collection of hippies in a wood – whatever works best) and the charity, which is simply an organisation set up to help others and which need not have any permanence.

Indeed, there is a point here – should charities such as Alchohol Concern (not actually my bete noir (he says, hiding his beer…) but simply my alphabetically early example) be expected to exist for the sake of it? Is not that creating a corporate existence for something which is not permanent – it results in the situation where charities seek work for themselves to do. It is (small-c) conservatism if not reactionism to simply believe charities should exist – there has to be a clear purpose for them.

Sunny,

Yes, because that’s how care for older people, youth services, local libraries etc should be funded right?

When did the state abrogate its obligation for these things to charities then? Either you’ve misread the argument,or your are confused who delivers services (I assume you are not simply being disingenious).

“When did the state abrogate its obligation for these things to charities then? Either you’ve misread the argument,or your are confused who delivers services (I assume you are not simply being disingenious).”

FFS – funding charities to do these things is a delivery mechanism. The argument is that the charities do a better job for less money than if you left it to the local council to arrange. It’s no different to contracting out the IT support if thats what a council decides to do.

Planeshift,

Indeed – so what the hell point is Sunny making complaining about people suggesting shaking tins when we all know this is not relevant to the debate on provision of services (indeed, his initial post is explicit that threat to funding to the charity with which he was involved was from government, not donations) – the use of tins was a sideline about how charity’s should be funded, not the bloody services!

It would help if people could keep the distinction between provision and provider in mind?

In my town there was a rapid expansion in the services that Charities provided from early 2000 – 2009. Services such as the one sunny describes in the piece were created to back up statutory services (to work in conjunction with youth offending programmes that already existed, perhaps?)

The housing charity that i worked for moved from simply housing people in hostels and move-on accomodation to providing tenancy support. These provisions were there to make sure a that if a person had lived in an unsetlled way of life that they could adjust to living in a flat and manage a budget. The rationale for this being that to prevent the person from entering homelessness again and costing the local authority more money in the long term (Housing benefit for Flat averages out about 75 – 90 per week here. Less for bedsits or shared accomodation.) The cost of having someone in a hostel could be as much as 700 or more, which was met by the tax payer.

Seems the idea to subsidise these charities with provision for long term goals was a good economic decision to me, but perhaps more costly in the short term.

Ultimately, if the cuts to funding continue then the amount of money that the tax payer will pay to deal with these issues will be more, instead of trying to deal with the systemic issues of why people are disadvantaged (such as those who are homeless or involved in gang activites due to social and environmental reasons) we will be left to deal with the symptoms through already over-burdened health, criminal and social services provided by the state, which as demonstrated by some of the arguments on here would be objectional for many right wing commentators as they think that these services are costly enough and it’s right fo govenment to cut their funding too.

Hi Watchman,

You said that the Big Society argues that “the best way to deliver funds and services is not through central bureaucracy but through much more informal networks”.

It is surely a relevant point that, disproportionately, the way that the spending cuts have been implemented mean that these informal networks will have fewer funds and fewer services. There are going to be bigger cuts as a proportion of income to local community groups which deliver health and social care services than to central bureaucracies.

This was a policy choice, not something forced on government. For example, the government could have said to local authorities that they wouldn’t get their extra money to fund a council tax freeze if they cut local voluntary groups. Or they could have decided to increase cuts in other areas in order to avoid cuts to the kinds of work which they wanted to encourage through the Big Society.

If the Big Society is meant to be an entirely theoretical exercise, totally unrelated to anything that is going on in the real world, then fine. If, however, the government actually wanted to implement it, then it should have had a plan about how to make sure that the spending cuts didn’t kill off the kinds of activities which they want to see more of.

The government may sincerely want to “dismantle a centralised system of control”, but for many people what this means in practice is that the local playgroup closes, that disabled people have to go into expensive residential care rather than being supported to live at home, or the local Citizens Advice Bureau closes down.

Karl Wilding from NCVO explained the key problem with Big Society, “For what its worth, I don’t think any of us ever thought the ideas expressed under the Big Society agenda would happen over night. Indeed, some of them feel like generation change. Which is fine.

But the myth that needs busting is that in a matter of months we can substitute the financial capital now being withdrawn from communities, whether with other sources of money or other types of support.”

sorry that’s 700 or more a week to stay in the hostel and the figure is taken from three years ago, now it is probably more.

“o what the hell point is Sunny making complaining about people suggesting shaking tins”

Because some people above have suggested that the charity sunny is involved with replaces its govt funding with what they can raise through shaking tins.

Planeshift,

That’s true – and if Sunny had been talking about that rather than social services and libraries in the post I responded to, it would be an accurate summation. As it is, his response was not on the topic of the charity in which he is involved but on statutory services (conflict resolution is not an area government explicitly funds – although it clearly should be a potential concern), hence my reply.

“Sunny, you’ve completely misunderstood what the Big Society is about. It’s not about state-funded charity groups at all, but rather encouraging people to come up with a vision of how they want their local area to be, and providing support for the achievement of their vision.”

Again, even if this is meant to be the idea, the cuts are reducing the support which would be needed for people to be able to do this.

For all the sneering about “statist” Labour, at least the previous government actually introduced some initiatives which gave people control and power about how to improve their local area, as opposed to talking about it while taking away the means to make it happen.

The discussion about charities is doubtless fascinating but doesn’t pick up on the very practical issues concerning dementia patients if councils, like the LibDem controlled Sutton council, close specialist care homes:

•Over 820,000 people in the UK live with Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
•Dementia costs the UK economy £23 billion per year: more than cancer and heart disease combined.
•Dementia research is severely underfunded, receiving 12 times less support than cancer research.
http://dementia2010.org/reports/Dementia2010Full.pdf

Btw Paul Burstow is one of the MPs for Sutton and a Minister of State in the Department of Health but has other matters on his mind. In today’s press, he is quoted as saying:

Talking about your poo could save you, says Sutton and Cheam MP Paul Burstow
http://www.suttonguardian.co.uk/news/8831214.MP_wants_you_to_talk_about_poo/?ref=eb

This is very good:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/2011/feb/04/liverpool-big-society-services

“As it is, his response was not on the topic of the charity in which he is involved but on statutory services ”

It’s clearly relevant though, as many charities/organisations/whatever you define them as, have been involved in the provision of statutory servcies, and are now seeing funding cut as part of wider services. Furthermore big society has been precisely about cutting statutory services in the hope/expectation that charities will take over the services. See the NHS reform and its proposals for hospitals to be run as social enterprises……

don,

You said that the Big Society argues that “the best way to deliver funds and services is not through central bureaucracy but through much more informal networks”.

It is surely a relevant point that, disproportionately, the way that the spending cuts have been implemented mean that these informal networks will have fewer funds and fewer services. There are going to be bigger cuts as a proportion of income to local community groups which deliver health and social care services than to central bureaucracies.

How else would anyone implement spending cuts – by cutting core government provision rather than the, however important, added provision? I’m not sure how you see there being a solution to this problem – you can’t believe in a Big Society and also in increased government spending (it is incompatible to expect society to play a bigger part as the government continually spends a higher proportion of GDP). so the government will cut (as indeed would have Labour remember). And the ‘add-ons’, the extra services, however productive or useful, will be the easiest cuts to make.

But these services are not informal – they are directly funded through government grants. They are providing services which you identify as health and social care – government provision. This is not voluntary sector – it is state sector delivered by voluntary organisations (and many of these are effectively professional in that they have managers and full-time staff on these contracts). These groups in dependent relationships with central government funding (either directly or through central government benefactions to local government) are not the informal networks I envisage.

This was a policy choice, not something forced on government. For example, the government could have said to local authorities that they wouldn’t get their extra money to fund a council tax freeze if they cut local voluntary groups. Or they could have decided to increase cuts in other areas in order to avoid cuts to the kinds of work which they wanted to encourage through the Big Society.

The second point would be valid if the model of funding currently in place was that for the Big Society, rather than that for Big Government. Unfortunately, I think the latter is very clearly the currently dominant model.

As to the first point, do you really think that you can promote local action by central dictate setting out the acceptable use of funds? It strikes me as exactly the sort of centralising state ideology that I am arguing against.

If the Big Society is meant to be an entirely theoretical exercise, totally unrelated to anything that is going on in the real world, then fine. If, however, the government actually wanted to implement it, then it should have had a plan about how to make sure that the spending cuts didn’t kill off the kinds of activities which they want to see more of.

I think the government wants to see the activities – it is happy to kill of agencies and networks focussed on central government funding (well reasonably so – there are some horrible centralising elements visible in the coalition). It would be difficult to build the Big Society if the Big Government had been preserved.

Still, this has brought something out in my thinking. Big Society is actively opposed to Big Government – it is a different locus of decisions about distribution of resources and solutions to problems. It is also fundamentally revolutionary in that it requires breaking down the existing order (who knew – sally was right about there being ideological reasons for cuts…). You cannot argue that cuts should not be made as this affects the provision of services the Big Society wants because there is more to this than simply the existence of the services – it is services that are locally provided and not centrally controlled.

If you believe that an answer to any problem is for central government to send out an edict to its provincial agencies (councils) stating how they can spend the money central government sends, then fair enough – you believe a strong central state works. But this is a vision incompatible with the localism and emancipation of a vision like the Big Society.

And, Don, thanks – this debate has actually made me appreciate how radical and attractive idea the Big Society really is – and how it is anathemic to Big Government (and hopefully Big Business as well).

@76

But surely government is a much better supplier of non-profit-oriented services, because governments are accountable to the people that vote for them in a way that private entities are not?

“Big Society is actively opposed to Big Government ”

I’m going to be cheeky here:

Can you back this up by providing a quote or statement from an organisation representing voluntary organisations/charities (define how you want) that specifically welcomes spending cuts?

63 Watchman

“The government should be providing for the poor huddled masses if they need provision. What you seem to be saying is that the state cannot provide without the charities.”

No, I’m saying that at present the involvement of charities is just how life is. I agree that, as a default position, government should be doing it… but that’s not where we are now, and given the Big Society concept and the reality of the Coalition government, we are moving further away from that rather than closer to it.

My point remians unanswered; how are proponenets of the Big Society (or at least those opposed to government giving funds to charities) going to provide for the services they perform? Given the ideological background of most who have these views, I’m guessing it is not going to be provision by the state…?

@76: “this debate has actually made me appreciate how radical and attractive idea the Big Society really is – and how it is anathemic to Big Government (and hopefully Big Business as well).”

But still nothing on what happens to dementia patients if councils close specialist care homes – which confirms my increasing suspicion that the Big Society is just a big political con to divert out attention away from the real implications of public spending cuts.

The Big Society notion has been tried before – and it didn’t work. Historically, governments of around 1800 were committed to notions of laissez-faire, self-regulation and leaving schooling and healthcare to churches, charities and markets but successive Parliaments – and governments – became gradually disillusioned with the outcomes from that prescription and legislated by increments for factory acts to regulate labour markets, the creation of local authorities and to provide for compulsory, universal primary education.

As Adam Smith put it:

“The third and last duty of the sovereign or commonwealth is that of erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works, which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain.” [The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book 5, Chapter 1, Part 3.]
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/smith/wealth/wealbk05

“Big Society is just a big political con to divert out attention away from the real implications of public spending cuts.”

Pretty much yep. It’s just the tories think it is easier to sell spending cuts if you say “service will be done by voluntary sector/big society” rather than “sorry, can’t afford to run the service”

“Can you back this up by providing a quote or statement from an organisation representing voluntary organisations/charities (define how you want) that specifically welcomes spending cuts?”

It would actually be pretty difficult for a charitable organisation to do that outside certain specific contexts (such as through publishing a research-based report). It could be considered political campaigning or support for a political party, and attract an investigation by the Charity Commission.

You can be relatively confident that charities which take money from the state (these days, most of the big ones) will be against spending cuts, for obvious reasons. It would be potentially dangerous for smaller ones to come out specifically in favour.

Hi Watchman,

If community groups which do things like make sure elderly people can live in their homes without having to go into residential care are not your idea of “informal networks”, then what form will these networks take? How are the resources for their activities going to be provided? What are they going to do?

“it is incompatible to expect society to play a bigger part as the government continually spends a higher proportion of GDP”

It surely depends on what government spends money on? A concrete example might be around volunteering. Lots of people start volunteering, do it for a little bit and then drop out because it is poorly managed, they don’t find it rewarding etc. etc.

If the government spends a bit of money in helping to improve standards around volunteering opportunities – training organisations how to get the most out of volunteers, make sure that they find it beneficial and can make the most of their skills, then there will be more volunteers contributing more to society. A little investment in building capacity is essential to the aims of the Big Society.

Rather than your “fundamentally revolutionary” approach which involves laying waste to what is already out there and rebuilding from scratch, wouldn’t it be better to have a more orderly transition which builds on the thousands of good examples which already exist?

After all, why waste money by defunding community groups which help people live with dignity, and save the taxpayer money, in order to conduct some experiment to see what happens if many of these organisations disappear?

Nick, charities are allowed to comment on issues that effect them or their charitable purpose – which covers comments on big society/spending cuts. (indeed many have come out against them)

Nick,

Thanks for that.

I was actually going to look for charity support for this, but I got distracted by the following story:

A spokesman for the Federation of Poultry, upon being asked about his organisations advice to his members on the forthcoming referendum on Christmas said “gobble, gobble, gump, gobble*”

Editors note. The Federation of Poultry is not to be confused with the Union of Headless Chickens, which is purely a satircal device.

*For those who don’t speak Turkey (or Turkish, not that that would help here…) “Our members should vote for Christmas, and we will be campaigning for the introduction of Thanksgiving as well” (please noe, Turkey is a surprisingly concise language…).

But surely government is a much better supplier of non-profit-oriented services

When Government provides services it tends to end up not making a profit. That’s not always the intention though.

don,

It is the way the network is structured – towards receiving funding from government (normally central or centrally derived funds) that bothers me – the existing system is designed to keep charities tied in with the system. It is significant that charities are not calling for autonomy – in my eyes (forgot the plural for a bit there – so many of you would then be imagining me with an eyepatch) because they do not like the cuts but also because they cannot envisage a system different from the state dependency in which they live.

Your example of volunteering would be fine, but is central government actually the best agency to enact these measures? I doubt it. And the fact would be that government has decided that volunteers need to be trained – not an organisation locally that is aware of the need for volunteers (and indeed of specific issues about recruitment and retention that apply there) – so once more you resort to the defence of state spending by holding up state spending as a solution to local problems.

And orderly transition is, as I am sure the actual revolutionary socialists on here would agree, code for diluting changes and allowing vested interests to butress their position. If a change is worth doing, why waste time messing around with orderly transitions – make the bloody change (was not that the great mistake in the first years of New Labour government – they let the radicalism go in favour of gradual change and basically lost the entire project to the vested interests). Ideals of consultation and compromise are imposed on us by those who do not want their positions threatened by democracy, not by any particular requirement for common sense (there was no gradual introduction of the NHS or compulsroy education for example was there – and both of those seem to have been pretty successful).

Incidentally, I am waiting for the evidence of a vital service (not a desirable one – a vital one) which is being cut due to funding being withdrawn from charities – yes, it is ideal to help people ‘live with dignity’ (albeit that is a value-laden and probably politicised phrase) – it is however a question of whether that is best done by the current system.

@ Don

It is surely a relevant point that, disproportionately, the way that the spending cuts have been implemented mean that these informal networks will have fewer funds and fewer services.

I said on another thread that I thought this concept was beyond the horizon of your vision and your continued obsession with funding tends to prove this. Another contributor above wrote

In our village we have a big society. We all join in; we raise funds to repair our village hall; we organise pantomimes; we have a youth club with 40 members; we have an active church; we look after old and vulnerable people; we run people to hospital who haven’t got a car (no public transport here) … etc. We do all this not because Cameron says so, but because we have always done it. We don’t get – and we don’t want – any taxpayers’ handouts.

As long as the state assumes responsibility for my mother with Alzheimers or my child with cerebral palsy where is the incentive for me or the rest of my family to assume the responsibility for ourselves? If the Council already run a local youth club, where is the incentive for me to start one?

A rebalancing of society toward personal and civic duty has to be predicated on the state withdrawing some of the services for which it has garnered responsibility.

@86

That’s as maybe, but some things should be done and services provided regardless of whether they make a profit or not. If a charity or volunteer organisation can’t afford to do such work then government must step in and do it – if government cannot, then people who need the most help will not receive it.

There are some things that need to be done, many of them are not profitable, just because we’re all human beings and deserve to be treated as such. Ayn freaking Rand claimed Social Security (little known fact) – what then the rest of us?

Galen 10,

My point remians unanswered; how are proponenets of the Big Society (or at least those opposed to government giving funds to charities) going to provide for the services they perform? Given the ideological background of most who have these views, I’m guessing it is not going to be provision by the state…?

Depends on the service surely? If it is essential for someone, then the state provides it (who this is through is unimportant – the state spends the money).

I don’t have a problem with charities providing a service if they tender for it, any more than a company or an individual – my problem is with the assumption that the government is then obliged to fund that charity, which seems to underlie your assumption here that we either keep the charity funding or lose the service (in many cases we will – this happens when the government spends too much money. Sorry). To turn cim’s arguments above around, would you argue that we have to keep paying Capita to provide vital administrative functions for the NHS? Because as far as I can see, this is the same logic you are applying here – that the means of delivery must be preserved if the service itself is necesary.

“vital service (not a desirable one – a vital one) which is being cut due to funding being withdrawn from charities ”

Well it really does depend on what you define as vital really.

But here are a few examples I’m personally aware of that should come close – legal advice for asylum seekers (provided through welsh refugee council in wales — i guess similar stories elsewhere in the country), Women’s refuges in cardiff closing, and Victim support in Swansea (apparently the church can do that now).

“A rebalancing of society toward personal and civic duty has to be predicated on the state withdrawing some of the services for which it has garnered responsibility.”

you’re right about this – but at least be honest about what it entails. It entails the government saying “we are no longer going to care for people with alzheimers, cerebral palsy etc, nor are we going to fund anyone else to do so – if you want people with these conditions to be cared for then do it or fund it yourselves”

And such honesty would lose any party who said it an election.

bluepillnation,

It might help if we actually knew which services government was meant to provide, as we probably all have our own slightly different lists.

It is also key to realise that provision does not mean anything more than enabling that service to happen (and ensuring that it is provided).

As to Ayn Rand – who has actually cited her on here? I am probably about as libertarian as any commentator on the thread, and my concern for democracy means that there are limits to how far I can go. So a bit misleading there.

“would you argue that we have to keep paying Capita to provide vital administrative functions for the NHS”

If capita keep doing the work, then they have to be paid. Contracts really do have to be met on both sides.

Once a contract is at an end there is nothing wrong with asking parties to re-tender, or changing terms and conditions, or even taking the work in house (or not doing it at all). But at least accept that if you decide not to pay for the service again, it isn’t going to be magically replaced by volunteers and people doing the work for free.

Planeshift,

Don’t we have an NHS to care for those who are seriously ill?

But yes, maybe it would be good for a party to stand up and honestly say “it is not the job of central government to manage everyone’s problems – it is up to you as a community to act as a community.” Because it will force people to think – and the strange thing is that as the other side of the argument would bascially be “we know best; they’re evil” (unless someone can come up with a proper defence of the Big Government) then people might start to think a lot more than some people here would like. Perhaps I believe this simply because I believe in people and communities – but I do not think it would be as electorally suicidal as you do because there is currently no properly set-out alternative.

Central government should provide the safety net, not the local railings and warning signs. Otherwise, what is the point of society (other than someone to have a drink with so long as they are healthy) or local democracy (other than to set car park fees and act as an opinion poll for views of national politics)?

88 pagar

The issue surely is that in the examples given of the Cranford like village idyll, or indeed your apparent willingness to selflessly volunteer your services to care for your mother with her Alzheimer’s, or your child with cerebral palsy, life in general isn;t always like that!!

Why can’t people understand that fairly simple fact.

What happens in villages where concerned neighbours don’t look after the elderly? For that matter, what happens in the village quoted if everyone happens to be busy when Vera or Alf needs to get to hospital? Where will the Big Society be then?

Not everyone has the time, resources, inclination to get involved in repairing village halls, running youth clubs…. or doing a whole plethora of things. Volunteerism is good…but it should be an adjunct, as should charity provision.

For all too many proponents of the Big Society, those who really want a withering of the state, and the establishment of a bucolic, libertarian idyll, what they actually mean is “I’m alright Jack”.

Planeshift,

Once a contract is at an end there is nothing wrong with asking parties to re-tender, or changing terms and conditions, or even taking the work in house (or not doing it at all). But at least accept that if you decide not to pay for the service again, it isn’t going to be magically replaced by volunteers and people doing the work for free.

Maybe some Big Society adherents believe this, but I don’t – I see it as a way of changing the locus of funding decisions, not the fact services need funding. So yes, cuts are cuts – those services are lost; this is an inevitable consequence of spending too much even before the recession – eventually you have to stop spending that extra money, and also stop spending some more money in order to pay the extra money back.

“but I don’t – I see it as a way of changing the locus of funding decisions, not the fact services need funding”

Can you expand on this?

95 Watchman

You just aren’t answering the question in any specific way; either you are being deliberately evasive, or you just haven’t thought your vision through to it’s logical conclusion.

As planetshift says (and again you haven’t adequately responded in my view…) how do you honestly think services which are currently paid for by government, whether directly or via charities, will be replaced by volunteers doing it for free?

Planeshift,

Currently funding is centralised, and dependent on flows outwards from the treasury (which appears to be one of the least radical institutions in the country). This is what I am slightly flippantly calling Big Government – it is the centralised decision making process (not actually parliament generally) which identifies problems and makes the awards to their preferred solutions.

I see the Big Society (and I think this is characteristic of Cameron-Gove-Pickles type subtle radicalism) as a way of removing the decisions from the centre to the localities, where the problem can still be identified, but the solution developed locally. This is not to say that Alchohol Concern (making a long overdue return to this thread) will not provide most of the services relating to alchohol-related problems, or that funding will not come from the Department of Health, but simply that Alchohol Concern’s relationship will be with a local group (council, voluntary organisation, some branch of the NHS etc) that has sought this funding and can award it – the relationship between service provider and client will be local and set up to deal with a specific problem. It may also encourage greater good practice to develop as more specific solutions are developed and tried and adapted elsewhere.

Three provisos that should stand out in there. Firstly I am uneasy that funding is still central, as this does not totally break central control – I would much rather see increased local share of tax revenues (and this may be lurking in the coalition armoury – there are rumours about fuel levies being distributed to councils and the Liberal Democrats would certainly be likely to support fiscal decentralisation) – as this still allows the shadow of Big Government – it might not control the solutions, but it can select what sort of problem is funded (which ought to be a local decision). Secondly, there are branches of government locally such as the NHS which are only very limitedly locally accountable – for this to work properly there has to be full accontability for all actions. Thirdly, this requires a culture shift so that people realise local is important (here local income tax would probably work brilliantly – and solve the problem of tax revenues) rather than focussing on central government all the time.

“Currently funding is centralised, and dependent on flows outwards from the treasury”

Actually no, funding decisions for chairities are being made by central governments, devolved govts and local authorities (and the EU as well). For small charities it is usually local government that decides to fund it- as this is where the people involved can develop relationships and networks to get the funding.

The thing is, in your model – it is still the taxpayer that funds these services – its just doing it differently. I’d agree totally that more decisions should be made locally, and ideally through participatory budgeting, and more taxes are raised and spent locally. decentralising the british state is an essential goal IMO.

But big society is not about that at all – it is about the taxpayer withdrawing funding alltogether from some services, reducing it in others, and the charities having to find alternative means.

“What happens in villages where concerned neighbours don’t look after the elderly?”

We have social services, the NHS etc already. Why do we need yet another layer of government ? If there is a need that government wants to meet, then give the funding directly to the relevant agency so that it is transparent and accountable rather than hidden behind a smokescreen of charity.
Among other privelidges, charities do not have the financial reporting requirements of public or private bodies, and are exempt from FOI. This obviously leads to the suspicion that government sponsored charities are nothing but entities set up to bypass normal democratic accountability

@ Watchman

This is not to say that Alchohol Concern (making a long overdue return to this thread) will not provide most of the services relating to alchohol-related problems, or that funding will not come from the Department of Health, but simply that Alchohol Concern’s relationship will be with a local group (council, voluntary organisation, some branch of the NHS etc) that has sought this funding and can award it – the relationship between service provider and client will be local and set up to deal with a specific problem.

Alcohol Concern is one of the worst kinds of fake charity, set up by government to appear to lobby government on alcohol restrictions and pave the way for authoritarian legislation to achieve a social engineering agenda.

It is utterly pernicious and should be shut down forthwith.

Your status as most libertarian commenter on this thread is in tatters.

Ditto ASH – the anti-smoking “charity” (100% government funded), who refuse to release the data behind their claim that 80% of the public supported the pub smoking ban, and convinced nu labour to enact a ban with a scope beyond that in their manifesto.

104

Oh dear… not that old chestnut again; lots of smokers prefer non-smoking pubs. The vast majority of the public supported it. Live with it… preferably outside

Well I know a lot of smokers and funnily enough none of them support it – who in their right mind would want to stand out in the cold and rain ??

106 Matt

I know a lot of smokers who prefer non-smoking pubs and restaurants. Sadly for you the public disagree with you by a wide margin too:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/smokenr0709.pdf

Well I know a lot of smokers and funnily enough none of them support it – who in their right mind would want to stand out in the cold and rain ??

It does present an opportunity for the smokers to go bitch about the non-smokers. But I’m not sure that’s sufficient to justify it…

@ Galen10

“The vast majority of the public supported it. Live with it… preferably outside”

Problem there is that “popular” =/= “right”. Democratic, but not necessarily right.

What I find interesting about the smoking ban is that, despite it being undeniably popular, very few pubs and bars were completely non-smoking before the ban. In my home town, there was a single non-smoking bar and several smoking pubs – the bar was a rather strange conceptual sort of place and did badly until the ban came in and levelled the playing field.

This is odd, because it suggests that 80% of the population were not being catered to before the ban. The explanation to this seems simple: most non-smokers would prefer, on balance, to sit in a smoke-free room, but would not go to a non-smoking bar if it was further away, or more expensive, or not as nice, or if their smoking friends were digging their heels in.

Which kind of implies that, in most cases, you had a load of people who were in favour of the ban in a “sure, why not?” kind of way and a minority that was really, really against it. Interesting democratic effect.

@ 208 BenSix

“It does present an opportunity for the smokers to go bitch about the non-smokers. But I’m not sure that’s sufficient to justify it…”

I have a non-smoking friend who was in favour of the ban to the point of smugness. Until the first time we were at the pub and sitting indoors because of the rain, at which point he got annoyed that he was being abandoned every half hour when the rest of use went out for a fag…

109 Chaise

Slightly off topic I know, but I take your general point.

However it is also interesting that in the days before total smoking bans at work, some employers instituted a policy whereby smokers who had to take regular smoking breaks had to work 30 minutes longer per day than non-smokers.

Funnily enough, not many of them found it an attractive proposition….so they obviously weren’t that invested with the concept of smokers rights either.

@ 111

“However it is also interesting that in the days before total smoking bans at work, some employers instituted a policy whereby smokers who had to take regular smoking breaks had to work 30 minutes longer per day than non-smokers.

Funnily enough, not many of them found it an attractive proposition….so they obviously weren’t that invested with the concept of smokers rights either.”

Also interesting. Although smokers evidently WILL go outside regularly to smoke, so I imagine it’s because the idea of adding 30 minutes to the end of a pub shift is very, very unattractive. Or people smoked on the sly, or in their normal breaks.

Another dissonance about the ban is that while most of the arguments in favour of it focused on workers’ rights – and rightly too – judging from internet comment most people who were in favour only cared about being able to go to a smoke-free pub. I’m agnostic on the smoking ban, but were it not for the workers’ rights thing I’d be a lot closer to being fully anti.

@ 107 – You are linking to government statsistics, i.e the ones informed by the ASH “survey”

@113 Matt Munro

Unless you’re a nut job conspiracy theorist (… ?) it’s unlikely that “the government” actually polled this themselves, they probably used an outside agency, which would have an interest in being seen to be impartial. If you discounted any polling advice paid for by people with something to prove, you wouldn’t have enough polling evidence to demonstrate anything much.

However, feel free to provide actual evidence to back up your claim.

“charities do not have the financial reporting requirements of public or private bodies, ”

They have to file accounts with the charity commission, and you can view them online at http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ – search for the charity concerned and you can find their accounts there.

For example; ash is available at http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/SHOWCHARITY/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=262067&SubsidiaryNumber=0

You can also view who the trustees are, and get a financial history as well.

The smoking thing is perfectly simple and it relates to property rights.

I have no problem with someone prohibiting smoking in their house or on their premises.

I have no problem, for example, with the local council prohibiting smoking in the public park.

But the government has no right to infringe property rights by criminalising what I may do or permit others to do in my own property any more than they have the right to dictate what I may do with my own body.

@ pagar 116

“The smoking thing is perfectly simple and it relates to property rights.”

It’s obviously not that simple, or we wouldn’t be arguing about it. I agree with your property rights argument to a large extent, but you’re ignoring workers’ rights.

“But the government has no right to infringe property rights by criminalising what I may do or permit others to do in my own property any more than they have the right to dictate what I may do with my own body.”

They do have the right to do that, and what’s more they use it. E.G. “you may not use your body to stove someone else’s head in with a lamp”.

you’re ignoring workers’ rights

There is no compulsion on any worker to accept a contract of employment where they object to the working conditions.

you may not use your body to stove someone else’s head in with a lamp

Err no. But I think you knew that.

What I meant was it is no business of government whether I choose to smoke tobacco or, indeed, opium.

@ 118 Pagar

“There is no compulsion on any worker to accept a contract of employment where they object to the working conditions.”

You see, this is where I split from libertarians on the whole “personal choice” thing. In principle, the “if you don’t like the job, don’t take it” argument seems fair and sensible. But in reality, it leads to people being exploited because they’re desperate for work. People begin life at radically different starting points. If you are poor, unskilled and live in an area that is an employer’s market, it becomes a case of “take this harmful and/or dangerous job or none at all”.

Clean shiny principles often don’t work perfectly in the real world – including many supported by lefties.

“What I meant was it is no business of government whether I choose to smoke tobacco or, indeed, opium.”

I’d fully agree there. The argument, as you know (for smoking at least), is where and when it is acceptable for you to inflict that smoke on other people. I’m not concerned about other patrons of the pub, unless it allows children in. If they don’t like breathing smoke, they can drink elsewhere. But bar work represents a large portion of unskilled and part-time jobs, so people will feel they have to work in a smoky environment because they need to pay the rent. To me, that’s exploitation.

RACIAL DEMOCRACY VOTING WYSIWYG
“One Race One Vote”
“Integrate the Segregated”

Racial Democracy redefined as “VOTING WYSIWYG” with “Race Codes” by the Race Equality Inspectorate.

Could you be a representative of your “Racial Constituency” ?

Can “VOTING WYSIWYG” work with “BIG SOCIETY” and give the idea credibility?

http://raceequalitysecretservice.blogspot.com/2011/01/racial-democracy-one-race-one-vote.html