Volunteers to clean up the island

[The Bastard]

14 minutes ago, Dirty Buggane said:

So who would be supervising, do you have people from different trades with suitable experience. Will this mean they are going to sit in a vehicle watching the work to make sure its up to standard, do they get a better class of biscuits coffee instead of tea.

Volunteering doesn't have to mean zero cost and zero supervision. It's about leveraging teamwork and the labour of volunteers for a bigger result. 

I don't paint railings for a living but I imagine if they wanted to use volunteers, you'd want to have someone who knew the job to oversee the site, safe working practice and the actual painting if you got volunteers involved. On any job with volunteers, it could be a paid professional, or volunteers who already have the plan, have the skills or did the relevant courses. The investment of time from the supervisor leverages the actual labour of volunteers, so it works best when you have a small team of supervisors who can manage a large team of volunteers.

Beach buddies for example typically has a small number of "professionals" who survey beaches, set the goal, schedule the beach cleaning and drum up interest, issue the equipment for collecting and disposing of rubbish, and give a safety talk about what's safe to collect (i.e. not munitions). They keep an eye on what's being collected, and are on hand in case someone cuts themselves badly on a broken bottle. At the end, they co-ordinate disposal of the rubbish. Takes effort, but the effort that the supervisor puts in is far less than the effort generated from 100+ volunteers combing the beaches by hand, shifting heavy rubbish together and moving it to disposal, which would take a single paid person months to achieve.  

[Dirty Buggane]

So now we have supervisors, professionals, courses, you must work for the civil service. How many people would it take to paint my front door, one me. No supervision no courses no elf and safety, and I can do a nice job. Bit of sugar soap a rough sand to key up the area and remove flakes of loose paint, undercoat,rub down with wire wool. Coat of gloss light sand and a topcoat. Never been a professional but you pick up things as you go.

[cissolt]

49 minutes ago, Dirty Buggane said:

So now we have supervisors, professionals, courses, you must work for the civil service. How many people would it take to paint my front door, one me. No supervision no courses no elf and safety, and I can do a nice job. Bit of sugar soap a rough sand to key up the area and remove flakes of loose paint, undercoat,rub down with wire wool. Coat of gloss light sand and a topcoat. Never been a professional but you pick up things as you go.

One of the COVID plans was to create a winter workforce to deal with mass job loses. Apparently it was something they did during the off season when we were a nation of fisherman.  This is similar, except government are only paying someone like Bill Dale and not everyone taking part.

[The Bastard]

46 minutes ago, Dirty Buggane said:

So now we have supervisors, professionals, courses, you must work for the civil service. How many people would it take to paint my front door, one me. No supervision no courses no elf and safety, and I can do a nice job. Bit of sugar soap a rough sand to key up the area and remove flakes of loose paint, undercoat,rub down with wire wool. Coat of gloss light sand and a topcoat. Never been a professional but you pick up things as you go.

I thought you'd come back with something like that. Thing is, you don't need a hundred volunteers to paint your front door, though I expect in reality you'd be on the phone to the council. Why don't you ring up Edinburgh council next time they need the Forth Bridge doing ? You could be up there with a ladder and a couple of tins of white emulsion, save them a fortune !

[Dirty Buggane]

White, are you also colourblind.

[Dirty Buggane]

Most if not all council doors/windows are upc as this saves painting and rot, also save energy as most are double glazed.

[The Bastard]

1 minute ago, Dirty Buggane said:

White, are you also colourblind.

I thought you could use the stuff you had left over from when you had your back passage emulsioned. Could always nip up to B&Q if you're fussy. While you're there, if you get some grey Hammerite and you still have some wire wool left over from the front door, you could repaint the ships for the Navy.

[TheTeapot]

Should organise a Big Spring Clean Up for a sunny Sunday in March, and everyone should go, and then strike. 

[Dirty Buggane]

20 minutes ago, The Bastard said:

I thought you could use the stuff you had left over from when you had your back passage emulsioned. Could always nip up to B&Q if you're fussy. While you're there, if you get some grey Hammerite and you still have some wire wool left over from the front door, you could repaint the ships for the Navy.

Oooh burned. 😅

[Amadeus]

I say we turn it into a tourism concept. Think Escape from New York meets Countryfile. Arriving tourists are shuttled to Ramsey and given shovels, machetes and other tools. They then have to fight their way back to civilisation (Douglas) and whoever collected most rubbish on the way gets a prize (a ferry ticket). The rest have to go again. It could work. 

[Two-lane]

12 minutes ago, Amadeus said:

Escape from New York

Perhaps you see yourself in the leading role? Snake Plissken - who thought of that name?

[Dirty Buggane]

I heard he was dead.

[Dirty Buggane]

Them there posters remind me of the outfits for action man.

[Derek Flint]

2 hours ago, Amadeus said:

I say we turn it into a tourism concept. Think Escape from New York meets Countryfile. Arriving tourists are shuttled to Ramsey and given shovels, machetes and other tools. They then have to fight their way back to civilisation (Douglas) and whoever collected most rubbish on the way gets a prize (a ferry ticket). The rest have to go again. It could work. 

So a sort of Hunger Games fight to the death vibe.

Could be some mileage in this....

[The Phantom]

43 minutes ago, Derek Flint said:

So a sort of Hunger Games fight to the death vibe.

It's Ramsey on a Saturday night already isn't it?