It's the panacea Wisconsin has been pining for. Really Great Britain has come up with THE answer to unemployment, and the budget crisis.
It's an answer Charles Dickens would have applauded. It corroborates so thoroughly his many observations of human nature.
No money to pay for cops? Obviously, then- you should enlist people willing to work, as police- for free. (oh, and, town clerks, postal workers, whatever...)
Ok, actually, the "volunteers" do have some incentive to show up for work. The way they have this rigged, if you want to work as a paid police person someday - then :
"Cash-strapped Scotland Yard, for instance, has instituted a policy mandating that most recruits spend a minimum of one year on the job for free..."
The mind boggles. Really really boggles.
Never mind the obvious fact that "cash strapped Scotland Yard" could have its budget entirely restored by the confiscation of ONE hedge fund manager's annual "bonus"... ("Look, Basil, I've got the little monkeys chanting 'No new taxes! No new taxes!' You've really got to help me look through Machiavelli and see what else we can find!")
I wonders, I does - just how much do you suppose you'd have to bribe an unpaid cop, to look the other way for a few moments?
And I wonders, too - who is going to pay the hospital (or burial) costs, when one of these unpaid volunteers gets themselves hurt in the line of "duty"?
And how dutiful do you think they'll be, on a nasty windy cold night?
And how likely to reach for the gasoline, when after volunteering for "at least a year" - they don't get the real job, after all?
Really Great, Britain.
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Tiny minor update: Minnesota, home of politics as gallows humor, has just provided us with a good specific example of what happens to un-employed wanna-be law officers.
Great isn't it? The rich are still getting richer whilst playgrounds in the poorest areas, speech and language therapists, and specialists in child mental health are being axed from the social care teams.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the current government policies are at least applying a lot of selective pressure to develop the non-monetary economy. It's forcing localization because fuel is one of the things most people have to have money for. Our family are trying to do everything we can without cash to keep our cash for the things we really need it for. Starting to look a bit amish here at our little house in the city! =D
Doing so not is only reducing my carbon footprint and making a move towards global justice, enacting what I understand to be the christian imperative, it's also more robust. Very much an "anyway" move.
Meanwhile the Guardian recently had a story about the Great Money Trick, as featured in the 'Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'. It sounds like a reasonable account of the rotten system to me. I wonder what kind of political backlash will happen. I think their current policies are based on desperately attempting to keep the money-gamblers in the City of London in the country. I suppose there is a trap composed of the interest rates on government debt, which would soar if the financial markets turned against UK govt policies, so they and we are in the jaws of it.