Supporting the local community

A couple of weeks ago I did something for my local community; I manned a stall at the Christmas Fayre at the local school. The local school organises a Christmas Fayre (and a Summer Fayre) every year where people in the community donate stuff they no longer use and other people (and sometimes the same who donated) buy the stuff. The proceeds go to the school. This sort of thing happens up and down the country here in the UK, the local community supporting the local schools with their time and their money. I’m very impressed by it, and it is a very foreign concept to me as a Dane. It really does make me feel part of, and in part responsible for my local community. Nothing remotely similar happens in Denmark. I think the feeling is that this is entirely the domain of the state and the counties. A significant proportion of peoples pay is deducted in taxes, so why should they contribute even more time and money. I think more people would be willing to contribute time to campaigning for more money being allocated to their local schools from government budgets than actually helping directly. It would probably also be considered unfair if a school was getting access to additional funds and help through a local community. Some would condemn the help received by a school as being provided by a middle or upper class having the mental resources that a working class community would not be seen to have. Those “resources” ought to be distributed fairly amongst all schools and the easiest way to do that would be by redistributive taxes. In Denmark, contributing to the community has to some extent been reduced to paying taxes, and in the process the local community spirit has been harmed.