I have recently come to the conclusion that nothing does what it says on the tin any more. Or at least what is written on the tin has ceased to have much to do with what's in it. This has particularly come to mind over the past week. There was the announcement that, at last, there will be an inquest into the shooting of Mark Duggan which supposedly 'triggered' last year's riots. A report making the case for local authorities to raid their employees' pension funds in order to boost housebuilding, was another prompt. And then there was the story about how Cancer Research UK was voted the most popular charity 'brand', with the likes of Greenpeace, Oxfam and Amnesty International not far behind.
What struck me the most about the latest riots-related news was, first of all, this idea that Duggan's death in some way caused the riots. I don't think it did in any meaningful sense. It is perhaps better to understand what happened as akin to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 and the outbreak of World War I. The events were connected but almost arbitrarily so. But in the absence of anything else, it seems to have become the stand-in for an explanation for something that was quite inexplicable and unexpected. While apologists for the rioters have talked up the poverty, lack of opportunities and poor relations with the police, none of these while attendant factors explain anything. While I don't accept as some have argued that they weren't riots at all - according to my dictionary a riot is a 'noisy disturbance by a crowd' - they were fundamentally lacking in any sort of content. The violent public display (what was written on the tin) rang hollow. Not that this stopped commentators, politicians and academics - no less opportunistically than the rioters themselves - hurriedly projecting their pet theories onto what were meaningless, if no less serious for that, outbursts.
The world of housing policy, not known for its outbursts of activity - as the absence of housebuilding attests - has also been failing the Ronseal test for some time now. The latest wheeze in an increasingly desperate attempt to boost 'affordable' housing and inject some life into an inflated yet standstill housing market, only confirms this. While all sorts of bad ideas from blaming under-occupiers and those with second homes for the housing crisis, to creating new confusing mixes of traditional tenures, are entertained by those hopelessly steeped in bricks 'n' mortar jargon; they seem not to notice that housing policy is no longer about housing as such. Social landlords, for instance, don't build houses any more. They like to be known as 'community builders'. They are providers of social services, on the one hand, 'supporting' their allegedly vulnerable tenants, and getting heavy on the other, policing the anti-social ones. According to David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, 'the mission is to improve people's lives, to help them fulfil their potential, to support their aspirations and to create functioning and healthy communities'. Even if that was all all very well - which it isn't - that's not what it says on the tin.
The charity world, by way of contrast, has been guilty less of mission creep than of a complete absence of mission. Which is ironic when you think about it. The association of the very notion of charity with the religious orders of missionaries who sought to spread the word; or with the pious reformers of the 19th Century at home penalising and patronising as much as helping the poor, may not be entirely flattering. But it is a reminder of a time when there was no doubt as to the message. Today's charities evidently have a great deal of difficulty articulating what it is they stand for. There are a number of reasons for this. The reliance of many, particularly the most well-known, charities on the state with regards both their funding and policy agendas, are foremost among them. But it is the absence of that desire to meet desperate need that led Dr Barnardo to create a school for the East End's orphaned and homeless children; or of that sense of outrage at the filmic depiction of homelessness in Cathy Come Home that led to the creation of Shelter.
Its not that we lack social problems. While grinding poverty and child destitution are largely problems of the past, there are a few good causes I can think of that don't get the attention they deserve. Whether its campaigning for real development rather than the so-called sustainable development that world's poorest typically get, or in defence of those scientists and institutions experimenting on animals in the interests of medical science. Whatever you deem to be a good cause I urge you next time somebody rattles a tin - or in the case of a chugger, their clipboard - in your direction to enquire as to its contents. Not literally, but what is it that they are campaigning for and why should you help them with it? The same goes for Orr and the housing sector. If you are no longer about building and managing the housing stock but would rather manage tenants' lives, then whose going to solve our housing problem? And if we are to make sense of what happened last summer then we need to get to grips with the mismatch between the rioters' vandalism of their communities and the worthy excuses. I'm sure there are other similar wood-treatment products out there but only the Ronseal test will get us any closer to making sure that riots, housing associations and charities do what they say on the tin.