Dear All

I'm probably going to regret this again but this must be my last reply on
this subject because I have lots of other stuff on (less talking more doing
eh, Andy).

Greg made lots of good points and I must agree that if the Govt. actively
requires and requests participation then it must facilitate it.

I think most of the problems we have been discussing go down to the nature
of what is voluntary/not for for profit/etc.  Gregs point about
participation not service provision being the key was what I meant when
distinguishing between community groups and voluntary groups.  I think
Rosemary's suggestion of [another] matrix to help us define and track these
groups is long overdue.  One thing I would say here is that any typology
needs to be able to track these groups through their lifetimes.  As we have
debated, once an organisation recieves taxpayers money or takes on payed
staff the whole nature is changed- typologies are not static and I think
the dynamism is problematic for analysis and management.

Moving on to Rosemary's specific points- I did say that my comment 'think
about some more' referred to her previous reply about my comment of VS
groups being inefficient and providing real benefits.  Clearly this is
possible, many other services whether public or private do provide real
benefits while being inefficient- if they were not inefficient we would not
seek to improve them.  My point here was could cultural or structural
change remedy this situation so that even more benefits could be realised.

On the charity mergers, Rosemary's message reherses the same conversation I
had with my mum.  However I wasn't thinking of them merging their
constitution or changing to provide one umbrella range of services only
that they could merge operations to get more for their money.  The
technology exists to provide a national call centre that can still pass on
information to localities.  Just by working from one building I don't see
that it should necessarily compromise the services.  The Sams and Childline
could still provide the same stuff under the same name etc.  The only
difference would be that because they use the same medium to provide
different services ie. telephones they could merge their operations to come
from one centre not the current two (or is it more?).  This would also save
on maintainence.
I do agree that each individual case has its own particular complexities
and that is why joined up working needs to be tailor-made.

The choice thing comes from my own research into postmodernity (oh gawd I
had to use the P word).  Rather like the voluntary=good Govt.=bad tendancy,
through 50 years of advanced capitalism and 18 years of Tory rule we have
been told choice=good.  However my point here is that too much of a good
thing can be a bad thing.  Just like Govt.s and organisations people can
experience information or choice overload whereby there is so much choice
they find it difficult to make a selection.  There are many reasons for
this, the advent of the internet and the rise of single issue politics have
also done much to enhance overload.  The proliferation of voluntary groups
should not be accepted uncritically as a good thing.  Particularly with
overlap- where overlap appears VS groups need to add value (sorry for the
business term here), or provide something extra or in a 'better' way.  I am
not sure this is always the case and for an end user it may be difficult to
find the 'right' group or service.

I long for the day when VS workers are employed alongside civil servants
working from the same buildings with services being provided and managed by
a mixture of people some of whom are paid and others who are not.  The
qualities of VS groups need to be harnessed from within Govt. not without.

I hope that this message sets the record strieght- I certainly don't
believe these issues can be placed into red or blue corners without fuzzy
boarders.  My intent there was just to help seperate out the debate a
little to provide clarity as to what had gone before.  Perhaps it was
inappropriate on this occasion.

My final (or possibly famous) last words are that it would be very nice if
someone(s) were to take up Tony Maltby on his request to produce some
articles on the issues we have debated.  I also fully support Sublime and
his call for more contributors- you have the knowledge and the skills,
don't keep them all to yourself!

with thanks
Tim