The bar stewards want people to work for nothing
- Thread starter Bodgeitandleggit
- Start date
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In the British countryside there are 1000s 0f kilometres of ancient hedgerow that need re-laying, 1000s of hectares of neglected coppiced woodland that need restoring. A national programme of hedge-laying and coppicing would go a long way to arresting the catastrophic decline in farmland birds and mammals highlighted recently by the RSPB http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/298550-falling-in-dove-the-dramatic-decline-of-an-icon-of-summer
Countryside conservation work is labour intensive, it can't be done by machine, and the voluntary groups like BTCV are only scratching surface of what could be done. The scope is endless.
And then there's archaeology. I was working in archaeology in the 1980s, under the last Tory government, when they introduced a scheme called the Community Programme. The timescale (1 year) of CP schemes, and the extra workforce, enabled a number of excavation programmes to be carried out on a scale that was quite unprecedented. For a few years the only archaeoolgical work to be had was on CP projects, so I ended up working on a couple. There were many other schemes, in a wide variety of fields, around the country.
The Community Programme is controversial amongst certain circles. I'm not sure why, because my personal recollection is very positive. At worst, you had a year's guaranteed work, you got paid something approaching the going rate for the job, and you got off benefits for at least a year; at best, you had a good time, made new friends, learned new skills, broadened your horizons and, if you were lucky, found a stepping stone to a new career.
It wasn't perfect, it certainly had its failings, but I believe it did a lot of good; both for it's participants, and for the communities it served. If you google "manpower services commission community programme" you'll get some basic information on the MSC etc., but you'll also get a long list of "good causes" that benfited from the Community Programme, most of which appear to be still in existence, but many of which experienced real difficulties when it folded in 1989.
Starting the Community Programme was, in my opinion, one of the few good things done by the Thatcher government; ending it was, if not the worst, certainly amongst the worst. Unemployment was at 12% under Thatcher, it's currently around 8% now. Why not reintroduce the Community Programme now, before things get worse?
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They certainly can, or in a few days at the most. I've been there, I've done it and I had the blisters to prove it.
The point I'm trying to make is that there is, potentially, years and years of work that could be done, by a large , well-organised workforce, repairing some of the damage done to the countryside over the last century or so. As an illustration, here's a news item from today: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/nature-improvement.html#cr
Just to be clear, those schemes are not about allowing the countryside to revert to weed-choked wilderness, they're about returning the landscape to something approaching what it was before agriculture became totally mechanised and chemicalised. They will still require management, because those landscapes were the end product of centuries of intensive physical labour, and they will require an equivalent amount of physical labour to preserve.
Practical conservation work isn't hard to do well, but it is easy to do badly. The scale of those projects is well beyond the capacity of any voluntary group, so it will inevitably come down to a choice between a well-motivated, paid, workforce; or a bunch of resentful young conscripts pressganged off the dole queue.
Who do you think will do a better job?
I think I should clarify what I was talking about, and also apologise for the brusqueness of my reply - it was late, I was tired, I had an early start next morning, and I was trying to be brief so I could get to bed. It's always a mistake to go on a forum just before bedtime, but I never learn
My understanding is that it cost £32000 a year to run Flexible New Deal. Chris Grayling has said that it costs less to run its successor, the Work Programme, but hasn't given any figures that I'm aware of. Given, however, that one of the major providers of FND was A4E, and they are also one of the major providers of WP, I can't see them settling for an awful lot less, can you?
Whatever they're getting, they get £13K upfront for every jobseeker referred to them, plus various additional outcome-dependent payments, and they're making enough for Emma Harrison, their erstwhile and unlamented boss, to award herself an £8.6 million dividend last year. Given the fuss that's been made over bankers' bonuses, and given that she only claims a 50% success rate, I think that's a bit out of order, don't you?
I'd be happy to do a year's work for £13K.
I've yet to experience the joys of the Work Programme, so I don't really know what's involved. There is a plethora of these schemes, however, and I think the "voluntary work" element you refer to is connected to the Community Action Programme, which is the scheme I'm currently participating in. I'd be happy to elaborate on this, if you're interested, but it's likely to turn into an essay
All this costs more money to the state in overheads, training, equipment, transport, pensions etc.
The workfare program puts this cost on the employer in return for "free labour".
Your solution is just to create another government workforce, in the face of a 10% deficit.
Brilliant solution!
T
trollmaster2000
They should be grateful that we give them houses and flats, and do not force them to live in kennels where they truly belong.
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