You play, we pay

The Taxpayers' Alliance blog Burning Our Money has as its non-job of the week Islington's advertisement for a Senior Play Ranger.

The requirement for "an experienced play worker who is level 3 qualified in play work" alerts us that this is not some isolated Islington loonery - there is a whole qualification structure out there. We know it must be important because Islington will be using "initial two-year funding received from the Big Lottery Fund". Yes, lottery players, your money is going to good causes.

How much of this is going on? Search Google for .uk sites which include the word "council" and the phrase "play ranger", and it offers you "about 3,250 pages". I'm not going to read them all, but one guesses that:

1. There will be a 'national strategy'

2. There will be guidelines and enablers and possibly inspectors

3. It will be costing us a lot of money across the country.

Indeed, North Hertfordshire helpfully inform us that

The Government-commissioned document ‘Making the Case for Play’, produced by the Children’s Play Council (2002), has highlighted the importance of play in children’s development and raised its profile nationally. In 2005, central Government pledged £200 million to improve children’s play facilities, and in November of that year the Big Lottery Fund (BLF) launched a £155 million Children’s Play Initiative.

How does North Herts get its hands on a share of this boodle?

Each District Council has been allocated a proportion of the BLF Play funds, with North Hertfordshire entitled to up to £227,000 over three years. However, in order to draw down these funds, Districts have to make a written application setting out their intentions. Part of this criteria (sic) is that Councils have a Play Strategy and Play Partnership.

There were four "contact officers" for the North Herts strategy submission, the Acting Children’s Services Development Manager, the Community Development Manager, the Senior Lawyer, and the Accountancy Manager. I bet they even took their meetings seriously.

This goes on across the country. Here's an inspiring picture from Richmondshire (no, I didn't invent it). Smiling are (left to right) Paul Radley, Army Welfare Service; Kate Davis, Richmondshire Community Safety Partnership (on the swing); Coun Jane Branch, Chairman of Play Partnership and Member Champion for Recreation and Healthy Lives; Judith Bromfield, Richmondshire Council for Voluntary Services; Lynda Powell, Head of Partnerships, Richmondshire District Council; Vivienne Osborn, North Yorkshire County Council 4 Youth; Simon Robson, North Yorkshire County Council Sure Start. Good people, doubtless, but should we be forced to afford them?

To take one more example, Cheltenham's Play and Free Time Strategy for Children and Young People in Cheltenham 2005 - 2008 informs us that

The Play and Free Time Strategy for Cheltenham has been developed by using three key strategic agendas, Every Child Matters, the Gloucestershire Play Policy and Cheltenham’s Community Plan.

Perhaps not surprisingly considering this ludicrous spending (not to mention the ludicrous overheads caused by all this paperwork), we find that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister was involved.

“When children play together, parents invariably talk together and new community alliances are forged. Inclusive play spaces can be the seedbeds from which sustainable and inclusive communities grow.”

That won't stop if the play strategy and the play rangers are abolished overnight.

If we are to have national nannies, they should be funded locally, so that local communities can decide whether they want to pay for such a "service", and if so what they want it to do in their area.

Maybe local communities would prefer their money to be spent on open spaces. Maybe local communities would prefer their money to be spent on home care for the elderly. Maybe people in local communities would prefer their local authorities not to spend their money on this at all, but to leave it in their own pockets, where it came from.

But how much more convenient for the state nannies to organise it centrally. Local authorities are immune from challenge, because they are bound by national rules. So the central bureaucrats can nanny all the local authorities, and being part of the large central apparatus they themselves are safer from challenge.

It is not the state's money. It is not the local authorities' money. That money belongs to the people. You play, we pay.

Bring me your sad and your fat

What does it mean to be officially disabled?

There's a lot of it, about according to The Times - 10% of people aged 16 to 24 are disabled, and one third of people aged 50 to 65.

We are also told that

There are 6.9 million disabled people of working age in Britain – one in five of the working population.

Ill health must be sweeping the nation. Why is this epidemic not headline news every day?

Some 50.4% of disabled people are employed compared with 80.2% of nondisabled people.

So maybe official disability isn't always as bad as we first thought. Ah ha, the World Health Organisation predicts that depression will be the leading cause of disability by 2020. Why should this be? Is the future really going to be so sad?

Here's another strange thing.

There are regional variations in the prevalence of disability. Northeast England and Wales have the highest number of disabled people, with one quarter of the working age population in these regions disabled. London, the South East and the East of England have lower than average proportions of disabled people at 17 per cent.

It couldn't be, could it, that they are skiving out there in Wales?

The common complaints among the disabled of depression and back pain are among the hardest to be sure about. Sure enough, when we look more closely -

In February there were 2.43 million people claiming incapacity benefit in Britain – 41 per cent were claiming for mental and behavioural disorders (my italics).

What will be the next - ahem - big thing? More of us are going to get too fat to work. But no need to worry, reports the BBC -

Individuals can no longer be held responsible for obesity and government must act to stop Britain "sleepwalking" into a crisis, a report has concluded.

The 250 experts said excess weight was now the norm in our "obesogenic" society. The government, of course, pledged to draw up a strategy to address the issue, though the report's authors admitted proof that any anti-obesity policy worked "was scant".

So there we are. We'll be a nation of depressed fatties - doubtless with bad backs too - unable to work, bailed out by the taxes paid by immigrants.

We saw disability has regional variations. And lo! when we look at obesity -

By 2050, as many as 70 per cent of men aged 20 to 60 living in Yorkshire and Humberside, the West Midlands and the North East are likely to be obese, according to the report.

About 65 per cent of women in Yorkshire and Humberside could be obese by then.

In contrast, obesity is declining among women in the South West, with seven per cent expected to be obese by 2050 – far below the present level of 17 per cent.

About 38 per cent of men and women are predicted to be obese in the London region.

Looks like the south will be subsidising the north even more than it is now.

That is, unless the nannies can save the day. The head of nutrition and health research at the Medical Research Council said: "We need to take responsibility as a society [whatever that means] for our unhealthy lifestyle."

The minister responsible will be Dawn Primarolo, she who couldn't get tax credits right, so what hope does she have of making us thinner? "We as ministers", she said, "have to balance encouraging people to engage with information without looking like we are being dictatorial" (my italics, though I don't think there's anything sinister in the phrasing, I think she's just rather thick).

In future, will suppliants for tax credits have to send her quarterly weight charts?

The charity Weight Concern, however, differ. They say the Government will indeed have to take some unpopular decisions ... such as restricting fast food outlets (eh?) and tackling food manufacturers. But "this is not something the Government can solve on its own", they added - I'll say that again - "and people do have to exercise personal responsibility".

Exercising personal responsibility was a Perth shoplifter who stole £7000-worth of clothes because he was an alcoholic and his incapacity benefit wasn't enough to buy as much drink as he wanted. Pretty able-bodied if he could carry that many clothes. And disposing of them showed initiative too.

And a Cambridge man on incapacity benefit was well enough to fulfil a supervisory role as a favour sometimes in a restaurant, as well as driving home after he had been disqualified for drink-driving.

What a system - corrupting of individuals, unaffordably expensive.

If so many people are "disabled", then the definition of "disabled" is wrong. We need to move the goalposts, so that fewer people are subsidised.

And if I am fat, that is my fault. Not the supermarket's, not the restaurant's, not even Dawn's and Gordon's. And certainly not society's.