by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
That are the words of some American Republican governors and such like but they should, like in Britain, where the same garbage is being talked, cut the heads and not the front-line staff.
In the US they are trying to destroy the Unions and the same, in a way, is true in the UK.
And now the coalition government of Conservative and Liberal Democrats, with Prime Minister David Cameron heading the line, is heading down the line of the Big Society idea also being used to destroy the public services by wanting charities, groups of residents, etc., to run parks, libraries, to take on the repair of roads, and much more.
I have mentioned the issue of road repairs by residents already in an article about the London Borough of Sutton and this is, so it would appear, something that the Prime Minister wishes to see all over the country.
The point here is, obviously, that if you can get work like that done by volunteers you no longer need the low paid front-line council crews or subcontractor that normally do the job. The same for parks, libraries, etc.
In other words, this is a destruction of the public service as we have known it for many decades, with the front-line being destroyed while the fact cats of chief executives and other directors remain in place begin able to draw bigger salaries as no little workers needing to be paid anymore.
The idea of the Big Society, as I have said before, is a good one on some levels but the way Cameron and Clegg are trying to impose it now, where volunteers are supposed to take over park services, library services, and the repair of roads even, this is not the way it should be.
While it is true that Britain is in a financial crisis as a country in that the previous government, the “Labor” one, under Blair and then Brown, left the coffers of the Treasury rather bare as they spent everything and then some and left the country in a rather severe debt situation, this is not the way that the country can be run either.
Some things, such as youth centers, and a number of other services, can be run by volunteers and by charities; they always used to in the days of old before World War Two, for instance, before the welfare state became the nanny state but there are some services that are – statutory – such as the provision and the running of parks, which fall under the Public Heath Act, that cannot be done, entirely, as envisaged by the Cameron/Clegg coalition, by charities and volunteers. Unless, and I would not put that past them either, they intend to be rewriting those statutes and statutory requirements.
What next? Our NHS hospitals and doctor's surgeries run by charities and staffed by volunteers?
© 2011
