Gordon Brown has decided he wants to make volunteer work compulsory:
Gordon Brown has announced plans that could see every teenager in the country complete up to 50 hours of volunteer work by the age of 19.
The automatic reaction to something being compulsory is to resent it. No-one likes being told what to do. This is one reason why schoolkids here will play up in class and bunk – school is compulsory. In Africa by comparison, kids will walk for miles in bare feet to attend school, just like people in the West did in former generations – because school is a privilege that they value.
If Gordon Brown wants to ensure kids hate “volunteer” work and don’t choose to do any more than the bare minimum 50 hours, this is the way to go about it.
It can never be compulsory to volunteer. Check a dictionary.
Hat tip: Fairfacts Media
Samuel Dennis 
April 16, 2009 at 5:39 pm
That idea is just so broken!
You are going to get people turning up who are only there because they have to be there! They will cause so much trouble its not true!
When I was 17ish I went on an after school training course. out of 30 students me and one other guy has asked to go, the other 28 had been volunteered by their employers. It was chaos they did not care etc. I passed with both papers merit, they other guy got one paper merit one passed, four of the rest got papers the rest got nothing!
What makes them think that the schemes will accept them when they turn up. I would turn them back at the door.
here is a idea – you want they to help – pay them, they work well – pay them more, they dont fire them. Thats worked since money got invented
With luck the UK Labour will loose the next election.
Sb
April 23, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Then there’s “Gay Marriage”…