Big Society's Big Mouth Powered by v

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to be invited to a meeting, alongside 50 or so of my fellow youth activists and volunteers, to the All Party parliamentary Youth Issues Group (stay awake!) Tim Loughton MP, minister for Children was there to answer questions we had workshopped around the new National Citizen Service (NCS) scheme, which involves young people spending their post-GCSE summer at age 16 volunteering and getting to know their communitities and each other, with a bit of outward bound activity thrown in.

I'm a big fan of the NCS idea. I think its a proactive and positive way to engage young people, and obviously a lot of time and thought has gone into it. Not every person is going to agree with every detail, and it would be awful if they did, but this scheme probably provides the maximum potential benefit to the greatest number of young people possible for the money.

Ah, that's the problem, money.

On Tuesday it was clear that most people thought this year's NCS pilots should go ahead and they hoped they worked. But most people had the red mist descend over them, unable to talk strategy and detail about NCS because they were afraid of the cuts damage to their organisation.

If voluntary groups jump up and down and shouts about cuts every time the government tries to do something, the government will stop consulting with the voluntary sector, or they'll only speak to those so desperate for money they'll say yes to anything, or to those who hold the government's New Rightist view of charity.

I hate the cuts, but that doesn't mean I hate NCS as well, just because it was thought up by the same people who think closing libraries is a good idea for children's futures. I hope Tim Loughton doesn't think NCS has all the answers because it seriously doesn't. Working class young people need to start their community involvement much younger than 16 to catch up with the levels of social and cultural capital possessed by their more affluent friends. NCS is a start and I want to see what happens. i recommend anyone who really wants to find out about it, without whinging from the sidelines, to visit an NCS project this summer and find out more for themselves.

Finally a word about the Labour Party, who seem to go blameless on this website much of the time. Their spokesman on the night, Toby-something, gave one of the most undignified, patronising and pandering speeches ever uttered. To say that we shouldn't try something because it may not work is a disgraceful message to give to a room full of the most innovative and publicly minded young people in the country. His effort to make the NCS a political issue was madness, at one point he seemed to be against the idea of youth volunteering and citizenship. The young people in that room were both impressionable and aspirational, and to only give them a round of bandwagon jumping is quite distasteful at this point where politics really matters. Toby-something got a round of applause for criticising the cuts - so be it, that's not hard - but it's what comes next, the vision for the future, that he was at a loss to provide.  Read less