How's it going to play in the media when a school calls in Social Services because the children in a family of six are malnourished?
I know how it'll play in the Daily Mail: let's just pass over that.
The first six cases in London will get media coverage. The first six hundred will get support from churches and charities, proselytizing thrown in for free, and the Conservative Party Conference will give a standing ovation to the minister who proclaims that the Big Society as triumphed over soviet-era welfare statism and benefit dependency.
Somewhere between six thousand and sixty thousand, the churches and charities will completely cease to function as effective welfare agencies - if, indeed, they ever manage.
Among other weaknesses, charitable organisations are *selective* - it is their very nature that they grow out of personal concerns and the shared beliefs of a well-defined group - and this fails the core test of a welfare safety net: it must be there for everyone.
The big issue, though, is that the voluntary sector is tiny. We can make a charitable gesture. and acquire the warm glow of making a personal difference to a life, or two, or ten if we devote years of our lives to it... But not a big difference, not thousands of lives, let alone a city's worth.
An act of charity is not a social change, no matter how many people donate time and money; not an economic counterbalance to a failed housing market and an economy that has no demand for unskilled and uneducated labour.
Remember, we're talking about millions of people: the ministers 'responsible' have no grasp of the scale of the thing they call 'government' and I fear that they have retreated into a cocoon of dangerous delusions.
no subject
I know how it'll play in the Daily Mail: let's just pass over that.
The first six cases in London will get media coverage. The first six hundred will get support from churches and charities, proselytizing thrown in for free, and the Conservative Party Conference will give a standing ovation to the minister who proclaims that the Big Society as triumphed over soviet-era welfare statism and benefit dependency.
Somewhere between six thousand and sixty thousand, the churches and charities will completely cease to function as effective welfare agencies - if, indeed, they ever manage.
Among other weaknesses, charitable organisations are *selective* - it is their very nature that they grow out of personal concerns and the shared beliefs of a well-defined group - and this fails the core test of a welfare safety net: it must be there for everyone.
The big issue, though, is that the voluntary sector is tiny. We can make a charitable gesture. and acquire the warm glow of making a personal difference to a life, or two, or ten if we devote years of our lives to it... But not a big difference, not thousands of lives, let alone a city's worth.
An act of charity is not a social change, no matter how many people donate time and money; not an economic counterbalance to a failed housing market and an economy that has no demand for unskilled and uneducated labour.
Remember, we're talking about millions of people: the ministers 'responsible' have no grasp of the scale of the thing they call 'government' and I fear that they have retreated into a cocoon of dangerous delusions.