For statists, nothing can happen without top down planing by the state. The state is mother, the state is father and if we don’t like it, we’ll be nudged, cajoled, nagged and guilt tripped until we damned well do get it.
People in part of Berkshire are being encouraged to make pledges to help their community.
The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead is one of the first councils in England to launch a PledgeBank.
The pledges, from cleaning graffiti to organising a street party, can only be undertaken if other residents commit to the idea.
The Conservative council said the scheme helps it save money but also “results in a better social outcome”.
Once a pledge is made, the council will check it fits the set criteria and then publish it online.
Sigh… there is so much that is wrong here, it is difficult to know where to start. If people want to do this sort of thing, they will, spontaneously, they don’t need the local council to organise them. Indeed, given that the state is appalling when it comes to organising anything, they would be better off not involving the council at all, let alone letting them check its fitness. I presume there is some commissar who will do the deciding, seeing as ordinary folk are not lofty enough to decide that themselves. The “however” here is this:
It comes after a failed Big Society scheme to get residents to donate savings in their council tax, which the council has cut for the past four years.
Says i all, really doesn’t it? No, we don’t want the local council telling us what to do and no, we damned well don’t want to donate money saved on our council tax on stuff the council should be doing anyway. The savings should be saved where there is fat to save – the chief executive’s fat cat salary would be a start. The Big Society bollocks is just patronising cockwaffle that Cameron shat out and no one in their right mind has taken any notice of. So, this council, having been given the big “eff-orf”, has come back for another go, being too thick to recognise a rebuttal when it sees one.
Might be worth watching from the entertainment point of view if nothing else. I wonder if they will get more or less pledges than before? Given that it was only two, the bar is pretty low.
H/T Gary Heelas via email.
A few years ago some neighbours organised a litter pick in the woods bordering our road. The woods belong to an Earl, when he was contacted he arranged a skip. He arrived early (no pun) with plentiful refreshments. I don’t know if anyone thought of mentioning this to the council. Maybe the health and safety report put them off, if the disabled and different gendered inclusivity report didn’t. Those woods have been completely open anyone who wishes to take a walk since the houses were built in 1950. I was born opposite those woods, under council control we would be living opposite more houses. I prefer noblesse oblige to statist grey conformity.
The majority of British folk are decent people – we do however have in our culture, a healthy disrespect and contempt for authority.
This is not part of out ‘National Identity Psyche’ but is rather a manifestation of the experience we ‘ruled’ have had under our ‘rulers’ for centuries.
They (the ‘rulers’, that is) never learn: once elected they act as if they were classroom assistants in a primary school reception class.
Well I’m not 4 years old any more (and haven’t been for over 60 years now). I’m a big boy – and I’ll decide how I spend my time. I earn my money, and I’ll decide how it’s spent (with permission from SWMBO of course, the highest authority in my life).
These self-aggrandising little people – usually unemployable in the real world – can go and screw themselves.
A pox on them all and a plague on all their houses!