Saturday 24 March 2012

Are we really all in this together?



My column in this week's (22nd march 2012) Herald Express...........the still restless pen...

I LIKE to read and words always both disrupt and captivate me. They always have and I guess they always probably will. But the thing about words is the interpretation of what is being said by the listener can be worryingly problematic.

Part of the worry is when the speaker is a spinner of rhetoric, purposely choosing words which can be manipulated into a convenient truth.

To be a deliberate spinner of words in a time of economic stress too often produces a dangerous toxic mix that simply knocks the unsuspecting over.

Things are changing so rapidly on a daily basis and it is all too often hugely confusing as we face an assortment of worries from the mundane through to life changing events which simply knock you off the perch.

But here's something to think about.

It is the concept of what might be called wilful blindness explained by Margaret Heffernan in her latest book.

It's worth a read and I noticed a copy in Torquay Library the other day.

In passing, when was the last time you popped into a local library? Wonderful places for community contact and a quick public warning therefore. Please use them before we lose them in these times of funding mayhem.

I worry about wilful blindness locally as Government funding and political dogma seep into the community fabric of South Devon.

How often have you become aware of something but decide you would rather not accept it as a reality?

One reason may be that things have become so complicated for you that it is better to look the other way.

In these bumpy times is that of course quite understandable.

Part of the bumpiness is without doubt the various funding pots.

There are so many curious names from the well-known Lottery Fund to lesser known qango (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) projects.

You can see the initiatives dotted around Torbay with two leaping immediately to mind.

The first is the wonderful Parkfield Youth Centre with its spectacular BMX track and the second the stunning geoplay park on Paignton Green which will open at the end of this month.

I seem to remember that the Parkfield development has £4.8million of funding but can't remember the grant received for the geoplay park.

The most shocking economy being made just now is the cutting of jobs.

You don't need me to tell you the impact of job loss as the fabric of a community is traumatised by that powerful swipe at the stability of the individual citizen.

Jobs that might have been there to support these new developments seem to be disappearing.

We hear so much about community volunteers in the rhetoric of the Big Society yet hoping that somehow people will magically appear to do the business is risky.

It's all very well saying that we are all in this together, but what does that really mean?

Even if we want to help, it isn't that easy.

By the time you have gone through the Criminal Records Bureau checks, undergone various inductions, certification, orientation, safeguarding, equality and diversity training and a myriad of other goodies, often at your own expense, your head is spinning.

Back to Margaret Heffernan and her thing about being wilfully blind.

This is not a time for looking the other way or pretending that someone else will pick up the slack.

Whether you like it or not, we probably are all in this together, although that may not include the folk who coined the phrase!

Commenting to a local councillor the other day about staffing cuts, he said community volunteers would pick up the slack.

Personally, I would have rather found the volunteers before I removed the proverbial bike stabilisers and let the novice cyclist off on a busy road.

Stevie Smith's words have been banging around in my head today and I feel that I want to let them go, but for some reason I can't.

Her words seem to underline these curious times so well.

"I was much further out than you thought and not waving but drowning... I was much too far out all my life and not waving but drowning."

Hmm.