OK, one last time. These are small… but the ones out there are far away. Small… far away…”
Even though it as one of the great achievements of Renaissance art 600-odd years ago, it seems we still have problems with perspective in this country.
It seems that our policymakers at a national and local level aren’t much more advanced than Father Dougal in the above exchange, as Father Ted explains why some of the cows he sees out the window are big, some small.
Actually, perspective is one of those concepts that is quite hard to explain (which is why the Father Ted example is actually a wee bit of genius) but, given that we live in three dimensions, its appreciation is innate and crucial to our perception of and ability to navigate the world.
Perhaps it’s this intellectual disconnect between theory and reality that makes it such a difficult thing for policymakers and funders to deploy.
Because a basic lack of perspective is putting many charities and services at the gravest risk – and as we know, when they go, the actual fabric of society starts to unpick.
Voluntary organisations are like physical, three dimensional bodies moving through space and time. They have immediate needs and also longer-term directions of travel – and both of these coexist at the exact same moment.
In reality there is no disconnect. But a rupture comes when the very means by which charities propel themselves on their mission forces an artificial separation, making organisations focus on just one part of their being – this being for the most part the immediate act of survival, of putting one foot in front of the other. Of staying open, of paying the latest round of bills.
Short-termism may seem baked into a policy system which revolves round a core of electoral cycles. To an extent it may even be impossible to overcome.
But the situation now, when charities are increasingly having to live hand to mouth, where every government and local authority budget-setting process is greeted like the Last Judgement is clearly utterly untenable.
How do you go about fulfilling your long-term goals, your mission, when all of your energy is spent on lobbying, on applying, on fundraising just to secure what you need to see you through another six months?
It surely doesn’t have to be like this – the sector has long called for meaningful multi-year settlements. They have also been long-promised, but never delivered.
This seems to be the way of it – promised much, given little, praised when expedient, ignored when the big decisions are made.
And yet, and yet… somehow we still deliver. We live in the moment of the short and the long term. We keep going day to day, but we also provide the seed bed for progressive ideas, of better ways of living in the future.
We save lives today, and we also transform them – and in doing so, we save the public purse billions by acting as the shock absorbers of the economic assaults on our communities.
Short term v long term is a false dichotomy. We know this, and it’s time governments at all levels learn this too.
Otherwise, ultimately, we’ll all go down together.
Graham Martin is editor of TFN.
