Our social institutions are being rendered as uneconomic and out of date. The kind of places where we celebrated kinship, shared values and solidarity are being replaced by the service industry activities of the professional community worker. The reliance on a specified grant system of classification and justification creates the bureaucrat as community organiser and isolates the local talent that doesn’t fit the allotted funding category as the outsider.

Real needs are met by public reared institutions, created through community solidarity. Needs that connects with the communities priorities, not those enforced by government trends that serve more the needs of those furthest away from the problems.

We have a propensity to socialise and create institutions that is how we find out what we want. We have more need for old fashioned community than we do for television. The meeting place in which to organise, rather than the drip feed of product placement and meaningless personalities.

The dedication of the millions to their favourite football team is for many a way of escaping from such things as the drudgery of working life, unemployment, debt.

Just think what might be possible if the same support and dedication were applied to our social needs as to our football team?