Andrew Jackson: Devil’s Advocate
Andrew has been involved with the voluntary sector in Scotland since 1995. He began as a volunteer youth worker in Edinburgh and has subsequently worked or volunteered in the fields of drugs education, homelessness, learning difficulty, advocacy, home-school linking, community development and physical disability.
He also lived in and volunteered at the original ‘clubhouse’ mental health project in New York City.
He joined SCVO in 2002 to run a disability-related project, becoming a Policy Officer then Policy Manager before moving to WRVS as Media and Public Affairs Manager for Scotland in 2007.
In December 2010 he began a two year secondment to the Scottish Government’s Joint Improvement Team to develop community capacity building approaches in the context of the Reshaping Care for Older People Programme.
He is a member of SCVO’s board of directors and its policy committee and in June 2011 graduated with a degree in law from Edinburgh’s Napier University. He is committed to making sure that the voluntary sector’s voice is heard in Scottish politics and believes its role in Scottish public life has never been more pivotal.
Taking Third Sector Mountain by Strategy (part one)
I HAVE a small column, so I intend to pursue this issue over my next two or three and you’ll have forgive me if this first one isn’t as sardonic as usual. I am setting myself up to get as poisonously Sardinian as I can (make that link after reading). Entomology is the study of
What good am I then to others and me?
IS the third sector full of good people doing good things? Am I good because I work in it? Or was I good whilst I did and now that I’m on secondment I’m not so good or is Government (Scottish Government anyway, where I am on secondment) actually very good? Yes? No? Maybe not in
Where the rivers of our vision flow into one another
TFN’s editor has told me that this TFN Gathering 2012 issue means up to 3,000 extra readers (and that I better cross her palm with silver for giving me the back page) so welcome to regular, irregular and new readers alike. The Gathering, apart from being a name that the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations
Had we but world enough and time
THERE’S a Jackson Brown song called Lawyers in Love. It’s a satirical song (duh!) about the fact that some people couldn’t give a monkeys about anybody else. However, since I appear to be on the way to becoming a lawyer, it set me thinking about those that could and do give a monkeys: folk in
Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus Ye Soldiers of the Sector!
I was informed that “cynical is better than schmaltzy” when I suggested I might do a warm and fuzzy Christmas column to make everyone feel better in the face of the whipping rain, excoriating wind and mocking darkness of a Scottish winter, which now envelops us all like a malevolent shroud come to life. So
The grammar of social enterprise
THERE’S a question about social enterprise to which I’ve never had a satisfactory answer. Now that it’s about to become part of the school curriculum (TFN 661), I think it’s worth asking again. I’ll do so and then try and answer it but I hope some readers may give me their take on it. The
Dead Men’s Shoes
IT’S time for more critical friend fun! Devil’s Advocate, remember? Reread the definition if you’re unsure what this is all about! (TFN 638, 3 June). Our first record is dedicated to all you middle managers out there and to everyone with worker, officer or coordinator in their job title. It’s Andy Snide-atra, with… “These dead
A rose by any other name is still a rose!
SOMEBODY described my last column as being ‘about flowers or something’ and someone else called me a ‘sweet hippy’ because of it. At this rate I’ll have to change the name of this column to Angel’s Delight! Let’s get back to the fire and brimstone and return to my short series of true devil’s advocate
A riot of colour
SINCE it’s technically still summertime I am going to extend my break from the dark and dismal world of voluntary sector sinning to deal with something else altogether brighter. I promise to return to gothic tales of gloom, despair and terror next time but I couldn’t let this thing go just now. In a recent
Incivility and Civil War
IN case you missed my last column, welcome to the first of what was intended to be a short series of columns in which I would truly play devil’s advocate and excoriate various facets of voluntary sector existence, as suggested by TFN readers, in order to provoke some sort of weird and wired state of
“Highly they raged against the highest”: playing Devil’s Advocate for real
THIS column is going to either be just the beginning or the beginning and the end of a grand experiment and it’s all going to depend on you beloved readers. I assume the TFN readership is sharp enough to know what a Devil’s Advocate actually is but I’ll remind you of the dictionary definition (from
Andrew Jackson: Ham-fisted allegory (possibly)
TAKING advantage of the extra holiday granted the citizenry by virtue of the Royal Wedding I am writing this from what is and shall remain an unidentified location somewhere in Northern England. It’s curious that the places such as the one I’m in market themselves as holiday ‘parks’ rather than ‘camps’ ‘though camps they
Andrew Jackson: We are the sector and we’re coming to town, beep, beep!
If you’re reading David (Bowie, I mean – don’t scoff, you never know!) sorry for taking the liberty of corrupting your lyrics but it seemed so apposite. There’s a man I know who must be in his 40s I suspect (God knows I am, so surely…). He has bleached blond hair, ear rings, a nose
Andrew Jackson: Sectoral discrimination?
THE third sector is so-named because it somehow comes after the private and public sectors. Alphabetically speaking that’s true. It remains true if you call it the voluntary sector or the social enterprise sector but not if you call it the community sector. Calling it the non-profit or not-for-profit sector briefly makes it the first
Andrew Jackson: The Sound of Silence
IT’S quite unlike me but I’ve been trying to write this column for days and I’ve been getting absolutely nowhere. How can someone as puffed-up with his own self-importance as me; who likes the sound of his own voice as much as I do and who doesn’t get out much but grossly overcompensates when he
Andrew Jackson: Whither thouest, Big Society?
HAPPY New Year everybody, hope you had a good one. Now that’s out of the way, remember the Big Society, the biggest and hottest post-election voluntary sector policy potato (in England anyway)? It’s easy to criticise BS, quite aside from the fact that it shares its initials with a less fortunate phrase, and it certainly
