Year on year on year on year

It's give a bunch of subsidy whores a job week. Or more to the point it's what shall we designate next year, because this year is ‘Year of Volunteering’ so next year is,
‘Year of Inter-generational Solidarity’

The Parliament thinks this is a very good thing of course and has commisioned a opinion poll on it. Just as they did for the Year of Volunteering which told us an awful lot,

Before analysing the responses from Europeans, it is necessary to emphasise some important points which can be drawn from this survey.


Ø It is very difficult to reach general conclusions because of the different status of the voluntary sector in different Member States.

Ø In the absence of Eurostat or other general statistics, the number of Europeans undertaking voluntary work cannot be quantified with any certainty.

Ø The contribution of the voluntary sector to the GDP of the EU and its Member States is very difficult to estimate. No EU-wide statistics are available. National data are only available in a few countries.

The point is that this will be of interest to a vanishingly small number of people most of whom work in publically subsidised pressure groups.

Those pressure groups shoul d be interested at the National Union of Teachers approach to active aging though. This is what grey lobbyists say,

Why a European Year for Active Ageing and Intergenerational Solidarity in 2012?


2012 will be the 10th Anniversary of the United Nations Action Plan on Ageing. In response to the demographic challenge all EU member states are facing the EY2012 will seek to:

1) Promote active ageing in employment

This is what NUT activists say.

“If I am in hospital I don’t want to be treated by a 67-year-old nurse, people can’t carry on in their jobs at that age.”

Solidarity Mr Warner, solidarity...