Something I’ve ranted about before is that we need to see the charities for what they are; in many cases, since they were set up during the first Progressive Era, they have always been lobbying organisations who hand out the odd cup of soup as justification. Meanwhile, the entire progressive strategy is based around floating the governance off from government and handing it to corporatist groups beyond democratic oversight- charities, NGOs, quangos, academic bodies, committees etc. The Third Sector are fully aware of what’s happening here, and it’s just what they want.

Which is why the last thing you need is for the State to do it.

Voluntary groups need to attract volunteers, so they need to compete for relevance and sense of achievement. The fact that they compete for volunteers means they by and large deliver that.

A State with a monopoly access to a pool of non-consenting labour? No chance. See what happens to Sure Start and other LSC projects and very soon local monopolies will pop up, lobbying the State for “certification” – making volunteering groups even more beholden to the State whim – and further lobbying for their percentage of the “resource”.

Not only does this idea enslave our young, it hijacks the entire volunteering “sector”, making it dance to the Statist tune. Fabians are “finding a room” at the thought of this being put into practice.

Policies these days invariably go through hours and hours of focus grouping. It obviously played well. And – dreadful as the proposal undoubtedly is – I can see why. “Young people should contribute to society” is the sort of statement it’s difficult to disagree with. I suggest running ads with unemployed people saying “I lost my job because Gordon Brown got a teenager to do it for free”.

There are two instances of slave labour in western society – the draft/national service (still practiced in much of Europe) and forced prison labour (carried out in the US at least).

(the income tax==slavery argument is however rather overblown – you don’t /have/ to work to pay income tax – if you don’t work, you have no income, you don’t pay income tax).

The idea of young people undertaking some form of cohesion-building exercise is not a bad one (think of Scouts, Duke of Edinburgh, or school activity trips, for instance) but the implementation would need to be very carefully put together. In fact, it would probably be better to start getting behind and supporting institutions such as the Scouts and DoE who already do this sort of thing so well.

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=86872840451

I suppose we will need a national database, an universal ID card system, a ban on foreign travel until liability is discharged, oh all sorts of minor details.

In the USSR (as some of my immeduate relatives could have told you) some of this ‘local obliogation’ was facilitated by an internal passport system. Or we could look at the Chinese Offical Residency system…

I’ve no doubt some will like these ideas, conjuring misty rose tinted images of national service. Incidentally, the BNP have been calling for the restoration of National Service for years now.

Funny that.

You’ll have to excuse me for not commenting at length, but I’m a bit tired & can’t work up any outrage. My observations were made here:

http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2009/04/gordon-brown-to-conscript-teenagers.html

As I said on another occasion, Cameron has ideas similar to this & they do have a lot of currency. A lot of people will vaguely like these proposals, let’s be in no doubt. But if in-depth arguments against are presented to them, they will change their minds as quickly as they did over such shite as ID cards.