Unless Ye Become As Little Volunteers

A brave and bright young army of British youth has dug the first pioneering holes for the entrenchment of Daveybloke's Big Society thingy. A survey has found that about seven hundred thousand children - perhaps eight per cent of the country's juvenile resources - are acting as carers for relatives, without claiming wages or benefits or tax breaks or London weighting or legal aid or anything. Doubtless, when the research is published tomorrow, Daveybloke and his Cuddly Cabinet will have much to say about this noble example, by which everyone from nurses to firefighters to ordinary commuters would do well to learn. Daveybloke does not appear to have found time to comment on the figures today, having presumably been occupied oozing egalitarian felicitations at his kinsperson, William Windsor, whose approaching eugenic partnership can be relied upon to bury at least some of the bad news for the next few months. However, academics and other unmutuals have been lining up to snipe at Daveybloke's Big Society thingy, and a spokesbeing for the National Young Carers Coalition even went so far as to claim that Daveybloke's cuddlies are plotting a significant decrease in support services. Of course, this is quite untrue. Once malingering is no longer a viable lifestyle choice, all those relatives will bound out of bed and into private sector employment, whereupon the children will be able to swap their role as carers for the more appropriate role of juvenile worker-consumers.