And back again… Via Perry.
I share Perry’s dismay. Volunteering is supposed to be voluntary. It should be no business of the state in any respect whatsoever how people donate their time. And that’s the point – their time not their employer’s time. And it should not be up to the state to incentivise the activity and it damned well should not be up to the state to impose it on businesses. And I’ll add that every time some arsehole of a politician tries to incentivise me to do anything they can be assured I will make a point of not doing it.
David Cameron’s plan to offer workers three days’ paid leave for volunteering has come under fire from the business world. The Prime Minister has pledged that if the Tories win the General Election up to 15m workers in the public and private sector will be able to take paid time off for volunteering.
In the private sector, only companies with more than 250 employees will be subject to the scheme. Communities secretary Eric Pickles got a rough ride on the Today programme this morning as he struggled to explain who would bear the costs of the scheme and what level of compulsion would be involved.
I’m not surprised he got a rough ride, for the answer is obvious – in the case of the private sector it is the business releasing the individual and in the case of the public sector it is you and I, the taxpayer. So, the reality is that it ceases to be voluntary in any meaningful sense and becomes compulsory – even if the cause is one the business or us oppose we get to donate anyway. And these people are supposed to be Tories?
They came canvassing our street last night. I was working on one of the bikes and had the garage door open so was aware of them knocking on the doors opposite. They had Willie Hague with them. They didn’t bother with me, though. Probably just as well… With this kind of statist fuckwittery, they will not be getting a vote from me. After all, if I wanted Labour, I might just as well vote Labour – at least it is what it says on the tin.
You’re either the volunteer mindset or not. It’s big over here in Canada, but that’s the culture. It’s always been the culture.
This is another one of those bone headed top down exercises with a ruling ‘elite’ (Insert own expression of disbelief / irony here) deciding they can tell people how to live their lives because they’re otherwise just as powerless as the common herd. F^#%$! affectioned timepleasers to a man / woman / don’t bloody care.
This mindset was described very well in the book Democracy and the Fall of the West. The premise being that once the tax burden reaches a certain level, it becomes politically toxic to raise any more cash that way because any party that did would lose elections. So the only way they can then give bribes at election time is by offering voters someone else’s money. The government has taxed just about everything there is to tax, so in the recent couple of decades we’ve seen the NMW, paternity pay etc, and now they’re talking about the living wage and nonsense like Cameron’s volunteer plan.
To offer the bribes they wish to offer, politicians *could* deeply cut what they spend, but they’ve given away so much through public sector non-jobs and red tape that they’re now in hock to unions and the armies of civil servants. It’s the fault of politicians, yet business owners are the ones being forced to pay for power-seeking profligacy.
This election must be the most mundane I’ve ever lived through, I really couldn’t give much of a toss who gets in, they’re all the same anyway.
Well put:- and thanks for the book link. Just ordered it.
Jo COburn challenged Pickles on the irony of the Tories imposing bureaucracy on business in Daily Politics and all Pickles could reply with was mumbled bollocks.
So much for freeing business from red tape and interference then.
Bugger volunteering. If a job is worth doing, then it’s worth being paid for…
Indeed. However, some people want to give their time to causes they feel worthy. Which is fine – providing they give their time unconditionally. If they expect their employer to pay them, it ceases to be voluntary.
What a meaningless gesture this is. Quite apart from all the valid points that you make, LR, there’s also the question as to how much useful volunteer work anyone can actually do in a poxy three days a year. Three days? In a year? You’re kidding me. Seriously? Christ, by the time you’ve got to the community centre, found out what they do, had explained to you what they want you to do, been shown how to do it, and then actually done it a few times, it’d be time to go back to work! A fat lot of help you’d have been to them in that measly three days.
And of course, there will always be the sticky question as to what kind of volunteering work will “qualify” and what won’t. You can bet your bottom dollar that anything which involves you doing, unpaid, something which our glorious public services should, by rights be doing themselves, but aren’t – such as helping out in state-run old folks’ homes, taxi-ing people to and from hospitals, or cleaning up your local town centre, will be automatically allowed; as will anything associated with “charidees” who happen to be campaigning for one of the Government’s favoured groups – the cheeeldren, effnick minorities and cyclists, for example. Whereas groups campaigning for something not Government-approved, will of course, not “count” as “voluntary work” and won’t be allowed. They wouldn’t in a million years allow anyone to take three “voluntary work” days off to organise a campaign against Government waste, the barbarism of one’s local hospital, or to protest against the smoking ban.
Call me a cynic if you will (you’d be right), but I’m afraid I simply don’t trust any politician from any of the major parties to offer anything to their “minions” without there being some intention of political manipulation for their own future benefit lurking somewhere behind it. They could offer me, personally, 0% taxation for the next 20 years, and I’d still be suspicious about their true motives. It’ll certainly take a lot more than a paltry three “volunteering” days off for any of them to regain any semblance of credibility in my books. So, sorry, Davey boy – too little, too late, I’m afraid.
How do you know a politician is lying? His lips move. Nothing changes.
How do you know a politician is lying. The answer’s in the question.
I’ll ‘volunteer’ as a tumbril driver, or guillotine operator on the village green…
How do you know a politician is lying. The answer’s in the question.
I don’t think it will become compulsory but the finger pointing shame thing will come into play ably assisted by the “how good am I” volunteering to do this.
I’ve just noticed the bike thing, I have the essential old gits bike, I am an old git, the wife loves it, an ST1100 and a not so old git bike that the wife’s not too keen on at all, a TL1000s.