Are you sitting comfortably? Good.
Once upon a time (well, 2001 actually) there was a government that wanted to win an election, so they made lots of promises that would persuade people to vote for them. One of the promises was to guarantee that £200m of the Lottery’s New Opportunities Fund would be spent on places where children and young people could play. Look, you can see their press release!
Everyone was very excited because they all knew just how bad things were for children. You can find out for yourself if you play the ‘Google UK’ game – just put this into the search box: <youth +facilities +lack> and you get 323,000 results! Try this one: <facilities +lack +play> and you get a whopping 522,000! I’m sure you can get an even better score with other word combinations.
Anyway, after the government won the 2001 election people got even more excited when, a year or so later, Father Christmas was asked to talk to everyone and work out the best way of spending all of that lovely money. ‘Children’s play review launched’ said the headlines.
‘Hurrah!’ said everyone.
FC actually thought the problem needed a lot more money than £200m - but we won’t go there at the moment. His report came out in January 2004, and it said:
‘kids need better play areas’ . Well, duh, said children and parents, youthworkers and playworkers, but they still thought it was very nice to hear it from Someone Who Might Do Something.
Can you guess what happened next?
Yes, that’s right! Absolutely Zilch! Nothing! Well, worse than nothing. All of a sudden, the government decided that it didn’t want to promise £200m of NOF Money after all
Everyone was very cross about this, except the government, of course. They said there was still nothing to stop projects applying for lottery funds. When people complained “That’s not the same thing as £200m of ring-fenced funding” the only reply they heard was “lah lah lah, can’t hear you!”
Wasn’t that naughty? Perhaps we should all write to our MPs to tell them what we think of people who break their promises.
THE END
©2004 ARCH - this story may be freely copied, please include sources and acknowledgement to ARCH