However, I think the response of the voluntary sector to his chancellor, Rachel Reeves’ spring statement (rounded up here on pages 10-14) says it all.

A big story this year will be the crushing return of austerity under Labour – and there are only so many times you can frame betrayal with reference to the “creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again” line from Animal Farm.

So we’ll park that for now and say a few words about the positive role the voluntary sector plays in public life – something TFN exists to amplify and celebrate.

Robert Armour’s excellent feature on the work of Upside, a new multi-agency throughcare for people leaving the prison system is a fine example of the vital and often unglamorous and unfashionable role charities play.

The daily news cycle is filled with stories about crime and punishment – understandably so, but there is a real lack of focus on how to properly combat offending rates.

Just as in homelessness, there is much talk of ‘upstreaming’ (addressing problems around conflict and poverty etc before people become homeless), then rehabilitation has to be a major focus on how we fix the blighted lives of those caught in the criminal justice system.

Victims, understandably, get a lot of focus, offenders less so.

Addressing the conditions that lead to the vast majority of offending (poverty, access to education and meaningful jobs, tackling addiction) is crucial but so is what is termed throughcare – rehabilitation and the work of helping people put their lives back together after prison so they are not dragged back into the cycle and offend again.

Scotland’s voluntary sector works across all of these areas, and a range of charities have combined to create Upside, working with the Scottish Prison Service and the Scottish Government.

This, I think, is an example of our sector at its best. It is gritty, vital work. It won’t get headlines (except for in TFN), and it could even attract the ire of the right, whose only answer to the problems they have helped create is knee-jerk calls for more punishment.

But it’s the stuff that creates positive outcomes, that makes a material difference, ultimately to all of our lives.

The feature can be found on pages 16 to 18, and I recommend it to you.

Graham Martin is editor of TFN.