Archbishop Vincent Nichols complains that iDave’s Big Society has no teeth.
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has criticised David Cameron’s Big Society initiative, saying it has “no teeth”.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols has backed the prime minister’s call for more voluntary and community involvement.
The key word being “voluntary”. However, if it had teeth, what would it do? Force us to give to charity (beyond what is already stolen from us in taxes and handed over to the third sector)? Come round and frog march us to the nearest soup kitchen and put ladles in our hands?
What teeth should it have and how should that work? The only way that it can have teeth is if we replace “voluntary” with “compulsory”. But then, it wouldn’t be about society, it would be about sequestration of the individual by the state.
Is that what the Archbishop is asking for? If it is, my response would be short, crude and very, very unchristian.
“It is not sufficient for the government, in its localism programme, simply to step back from social need and say this is a local issue.”
Erm, actually…
I think there are a lot of Tories who would actually want those who are out of work to be forced into ‘volunteering’ their time. The amount of times I’ve tried to explain to these addle-brained numbskulls that voluntary isn’t voluntary if you’re forcing, cajoling, or otherwise putting pressure on someone to give their time.
Arseholes.
Will some of the Vatican’s billions be given to big society projects?
Certainly the Vatican Bank is giving very low interest loans to Irish Catholic farmers from the south to buy up Protestant farms in Northern Ireland, so they know how to use money!
And I won’t even mention homo priests sodomizing young boys, because that would be to drag the discussion down into the gutter.