We all depend on voluntary – and not compulsory – service within Croydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: In this latest Volunteer Week, PETER UNDERWOOD, pictured right, who leads an organization that depends on voluntary service, pays tribute to people who give up their time, efforts and expertise in the community and the political process.

Volunteers’ Week in the UK starts on the first Monday in June each year. This is also the 40th year of Volunteer Week.

The aim of the week is to recognise, celebrate and thank the country’s incredible volunteers for all they contribute to our local communities, the voluntary sector and society as a whole.

I have to admit that it wasn’t until I left my civil service job and started looking for ways to get more involved in my local community that I started to realize just how many volunteers there are in Croydon and all the wonderful ways in which we it helps. the communities.

Giving their time: Conservation Volunteers is one of the groups active in Croydon

During the covid lockdown it was amazing to see all the people who stepped forward to volunteer but it’s important to remember that many of those groups who organized the volunteering existed before isolation and have continued ever since.

In Croydon there are volunteers still helping out in food banks and food centres, cooking hot meals for people who need a meal and continuing the befriending service to talk to people who don’t have much chance to interact with anyone else.

This is in addition to those people who help pick up litter, who help look after our parks, who help in our hospitals and schools, who answer helplines, who provide free specialist advice and who help in many other ways.

Then there are the volunteers who help look after other volunteers: residents’ associations, faith leaders, organizers and support teams. I was at an event just the other week where my local residents’ association held a thank you event for everyone who delivers the local magazine – volunteers thanking volunteers.

My experience as a volunteer and volunteer manager has taught me that volunteers are a very precious thing and should be treated as such.

I find it worrying when any organization starts to assume that volunteers will only do what they are told to do or replace paid staff. Volunteers do what they are interested in doing and that passion for the job is their strength. I think this is also one of the reasons why the Tory’s recent announcement to force young people into voluntary roles has gone down so badly.

If you want to volunteer, there are so many ways to help. A good place to start is Croydon Voluntary Action who help and support so many groups in Croydon.

And this Volunteer Week, please say a big thank you to all the volunteers you know.

How the ‘Croydon Effect’ leaves the ‘experts’ guessing

At this point in the election campaign, I would like to extend my personal thanks to all the great people who have volunteered to help the Green Party. Apart from the specialist staff at the central and regional offices, everyone involved in the political campaign is a volunteer – including most of the candidates.

Many of us still work full time to pay the bills as well as take care of our families and all the other things we have to do in our lives. The same goes for many people in all parties.

So while you may not agree with our policies, most of us in elections give up a lot of time and effort because we believe it’s the right thing for our communities. As a candidate I’ve seen the amount of abuse we get and when you add on top of all the long hours and stress of constantly being on the campaign trail, it’s a strain on your physical, mental and family health. life.

You can say “but you volunteered to do it”, and it’s true.

But my concern is that many bright people who we desperately need in politics are being put off by the stress and strain of participating and the impact on the rest of their lives.

We all rightly complain about the poor standard of elected politicians, but we also need to think about how we treat the people who are elected.

As a final point on the current election, we have now entered the silly season when people start making predictions and creating websites that try to tell others how to vote “tactically”.

Even the largest national surveys only provide a snapshot of what is happening across the country. They don’t really tell you what’s going on in your constituency. As YouGov states in their latest survey, “A place’s average error will increase when specific local factors are at play that are difficult to fully account for in our model.”

Wrong tactics: in Croydon this year, where most seats look set to be won by large majorities, there is no need for ‘tactical voting’

In other words, the more things happened locally, the more guesswork there is when it comes to the local outcome. The “tactical voting” sites are just applying national polling numbers to what happened in the 2019 election. It’s not very smart and I know places where their voting advice seems more based on what they want to happen instead of what is really happening in that area.

Croydon is a prime example of this, a lot has happened in the last five years as you may have noticed. We had the Labor debacle at Croydon Council, followed by the Tories who have shown they are no better and are rapidly building their own list of failures, broken promises and scandals.

We know from the recent election that the Tory vote in Croydon has gone down, but the Labor vote hasn’t really gone up. It looks like the Greens are the ones benefiting, closing the gap on the old parties and in some areas already moving into second place.

Pollsters mostly predict that Labor will win all the seats in Croydon. The Tories are only challenging in Croydon South and possibly slipping back into third or even fourth elsewhere.

I’m not going to claim that the Greens are going to win everywhere, as much as I’d like that to happen, but I’d say you’d be wise not to believe every prediction you hear.

When it comes to “tactical voting,” don’t spend all your time worrying about how everyone else might vote. You only get one vote, so use it to say who you want to win. If enough people think like you, then your candidate will be the winner.

Read more: Whether it’s your water supplier or MP, you deserve a choice
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• ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s most rotten boroughs for the seventh consecutive year in the annual summary of civic advertising in Private magazine