This is something I can agree with:
A few short days ago, Sara Scarlett, a well known libertarian and a former Lib Dem started a petition calling on the Government to cease all funding of the charitable sector.
A “charity” which receives taxpayer funding is simply not a charity. In light of the Kids Company scandal it is fair to say that a symbiotic relationship between gov. and charities is unhelpful and inappropriate. Taxpayer funding turns charities into unaccountable Quangos. This is morally wrong.
What problems do you believe taxpayer funding of charities produce?
If a “charity” receives public funding, it’s not a charity, it’s quango. That may just be semantics, however, semantics are usually manipulated to obscure poor practice.
The accountability, transparency and scrutiny standards of Charities are well below the standards expected in other publically funded bodies.
Government funding isn’t granted on the basis of merit. It’s given to Government favourites. Other charities were resentful of Kids Company’s special status.
Meaning well is not the same as doing good. There seems to be no accurate measure of a charity’s output. With no way to measure output then there’s no way to conduct a cost/benefit analysis. Whilst giving away your own money on a wing and a prayer is fine by me, it’s not okay with public funds.
The Charity sector should not be a subdivision of Whitehall. The charity sector is not meant to be part of the Welfare State. If the two are virtually joined then Charity is just a way for politicians to absolve themselves of direct responsibility.
In my humble opinion, public funding makes charities lazy. Chasing public funds is not the same as fundraising from the general public. It is a different game and when a charity does one it usually neglects the other.
It’s a deceit to claim to be a charity, when very little of your funding comes from voluntary public donations. ASH is a registered charity, yet it gets almost all its money from other fake charities (e.g. CRUK) or from the government or Big Pharma. It’s like pretending to be an amateur football player when you’re actually a professional. One plays football for the love of the game, and the other plays football to earn a living.
The worst of it is these fake charities are so uncharitable. There was nothing charitable about campaigning to ban smoking in pubs, and exile smokers to the outdoors. Charity is “an unconditional love for others“. When was the last time that any smoker was foolish enough to imagine that ASH or CRUK “loved” them? They don’t. They hate smokers, and they work hard to exclude them and demonise them. They are the mortal enemies of smokers. They pretend to be “helping” them, but all they ever actually do is hurt them. And they do it with taxpaying smokers’ money.
Frank Davis 
I’ve signed the petition, but last time I looked there was little more than a paltry 500 or so names on there, which isn’t going to get it very far. I’d also like there to be more scrutiny of the scam of “charities giving money to other charities” such as you outline in your item, Frank. I suspect that a lot of people who run marathons and hold garage sales and drop their loose change into collection boxes for “good causes” don’t realise that in a lot of cases (I suspect largely for tax and/or political reasons), the money they give to one charity actually ends up in the hands of another – with whose aims they might not actually agree with at all, or may even object to. This is something that someone like Ms Scarlett (or a keen scandal-seeking journalist) could do well to publicise widely.
The Charity Commissioners (or whatever they’re called these days) just don’t seem to be bothered to check up on charities once they’re established these days, so they are probably themselves due for a major overhaul. Doubt it’ll happen, though.
Very refreshing! She is absolutely correct that the moment a charity receives funding from the government, it ceases to be a charity and becomes a quango (an acronym not even in our vocabulary here in the U.S.), and she is spot-on that semantics are usually manipulated to obscure poor practice (your final paragraph sums this up nicely). I wish I could sign the petition.
I’ve signed.
Me, too.
And me.
In America, I think we have more tax breaks for individual citizens donating to charities rather than direct government payments to these groups.
I don’t know if anyone will be (or should be) interested in a financial evaluation of The American Cancer society, but, for those who might….
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?keyword_list=american+cancer+society&Submit2=Search&bay=search.results (Click on ACS in blue type.)
I tend to think of “charity” as feeding the poor and giving medical assistance to lepers. An act of pure good, one person helping another – AT THE EXPENSE OF THE GIVER.
My definition is obviously out of date. Most “charities” are fundraising businesses.
Does the “charity” sector of the economy help sick and poor people? Yes, but it also provides many well-paid jobs. Median household income in the U. S. (with maybe two people working) is $50,000.00. The American Cancer Society has three Vice Presidents who each earn over a million dollars a year. (Interestingly, the Chief Executive Officer gets a paltry $845,787.00 plus another $76,890.00 from “Affiliates.”) I’m sure that these dynamic executives have generous expense accounts and work in plushy furnished offices. I wonder how many sick people they see in their daily activities. I wonder how much money they collect from people earning $50,000.00 a year.
When I was young and immature, I donated to charities via a workplace payroll deduction. I stopped doing that many decades ago.
“Charities” have the moral high ground. They’re helping the sick and poor. But they won’t get any money from me.
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In New York State, if you buy canned (or bottled) beer or soda (or similar products) you pay a five cent recycling fee for each can / bottle. You can return empties to the store and get your five cents back. You can also toss these in the garbage, but then you don’t get the refund.
In my not rich / not poor neighborhood in New York City, many people choose the garbage option.
On collection days, at two or three o’clock in the morning, some people push shopping carts down the street, examining the garbage from each house, in the hope of finding cans / bottles that they can redeem for five cents. (Jesus Christ, this is America?)
My only contribution to “charity” is giving a bag of empty cans to a shopping cart person as he or she wanders past my house in the wee hours of the morning. The sad thing (the thing that gets me angry) is that these people are grateful to be given my garbage.
You forgot all the vacation homes the ACS bought for their upper echelons use and the magnificently expensive world wide meetings they have with extravagant costs…….The ACS is the worse of the lot of rats………..
Rockefeller also created the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Foundation, and the American Lung Association in this eugenics framework)
Antismoking is not new. It has a long, sordid history. The three antismoking crusades of the last century have been eugenics-driven. In eugenics, health is erroneously reduced to an entirely biological phenomenon and where a self-installed elite attempt to engineer/breed a “better” human herd. In addition to a genetic aspect, eugenics views tobacco and alcohol as racial poisons needing to be eradicated (negative eugenics). Antismoking was rife in early-1900s USA. Smoking and tobacco sales were banned in quite a number of American states.
Dillow (1981) notes that the bulk of antismoking claims were fraudulent and inflammatory. Dillow fails to note that the antismoking crusade of the early-1900s USA was eugenics-driven: Eugenics was mainstream in the USA at this time. At the turn of the last century, eugenics was mainstream in the USA, the UK, some European countries, and a number of Scandinavian countries. The USA appears to be the most prominent. The mega-wealthy in the USA (e.g., Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Kellogg) were supporters and funders of eugenics (and antismoking, anti-alcohol) – and still are.
Frank, I have been watching this petition which I also shared with my few paltry followers, but it is hardly moving! Very disappointing.
It is disappointing but, unfortunately, it’s not seen to attack ‘charity’.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/health-study-shows-economic-burden-of-smoking-overeating-inactivity-1.3190141
Funnily enough – Debbie’s megaphone did run today another CHARITY’s concern: Obesity has caused a 60% (no actual number given!) increase in type 2 diabetes – and this would bring the NHS to it’s knees…..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33932930
“We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, it’s time to get serious about lifestyle change.”
Erm…. I do have a question. WHO on earth is “Diabetes UK”?
Ah, yeah:
Diabetes UK is the leading UK charity that cares for, connects with and campaigns on behalf of all people affected by diabetes.
A CHARITY dictating politicians to dictate ‘life style’ change?
WHO is in charge here? Und WHO funds WHOM?
Oh dear. When ‘exiled to the outdoors’, anti-smokers begin to show their own intellect.
That’s another reason why I will not have anti-smokers in my circle of friends.
Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control
China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/11805523/Doomsday-clock-for-global-market-crash-strikes-one-minute-to-midnight-as-central-banks-lose-control.html
Interesting. Someone I know – who does understand stock market etc. much better than I do – did tell me that the crash was inevitable. He pointed towards September for it to happen.
Thing is they finally figured out they printed all the money they could and now the depression will hit as it always does when they start printing forever
It’s a deceit to claim to be a charity, when very little of your funding comes from voluntary public donations. ASH is a registered charity, yet it gets almost all its money from other fake charities (e.g. CRUK) or from the government or Big Pharma.
CRUK…. I have to hand it to the club – it sure knows how to manipulate people to give them money, or sponsor someone who will hand over cash without having a question.
This year alone I declined three “offers” to sponsor someone who will hand over money to CRUK.
But I did ask EACH of the abused WHAT EXACTLY wonderful CRUK has done for cancer sufferers since over the years CRUK has wrung a lot of cash out of people.
NONE of them could provide an answer other than “there-was-something-about-some-research-on-the-BBC”.
I seriously doubt we will hear about this ‘some research’ ever again. Sure, every now and then CRUK announces some sort of “break-through” – and nothing will be ever heard again because it is an ad which serves to wring more cash out of people.
Oh, that does remind me of another unanswered question: WHAT IS THE SALARY OF CRUK’S CHIEF EXECUTIVE(S) and WHO funds this salary?
There was nothing charitable about campaigning to ban smoking in pubs, and exile smokers to the outdoors. Charity is “an unconditional love for others“. When was the last time that any smoker was foolish enough to imagine that ASH or CRUK “loved” them?
Indeed, CHARITY IS AN UNCONDITIONAL LOVE FOR OTHERS. In order for ASH or CRUK to love me, I would have to give up my much loved habit.
I don’t need ‘love’ like that. ASH and CRUK know it, so CRUK has had a ‘good idea’: get relatives of smokers to run some (idiotic) race and make the smokers sponsor them. The money begged will go to CRUK, who, in turn, will deliver the same bullshit over and over again.
It’s not called ‘love’, it’s called ABUSE.
Quite a while ago I was in a shop and by the till there was a CRUK begging tin. The elderly woman shop assistant asked if I want to throw the few pence change into the CRUK’s begging tin to which I replied that they will NEVER get a penny of me! (followed by mumbling lying b*st*rds; leeches….)
I did expect a little hostility from the customers behind me. Much to my surprise I saw grinning faces when turning around… Perhaps the smokers aren’t as stupid as we are being told?
Frank,
As you don’t have a television, you’ve been spared the latest wheeze by CRUK to make idiots feel as if they’re helping – by denial.
So you quit drinking for the whole of September and give all the money you save to cuddly wuddly CRUK.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/support-us/find-an-event/charity-challenges/dryathlon
(Their advert – prime time too – runs for about 45 seconds).
I did search in this link for the salary of CRUK chief executive(s) and who funds it.
No luck there.
Neither did I find WHERE exactly the “dryathlon” (huh?) money goes to. More “research”?
I REALLY do hope some idiot will ask me to sponsor him/her for that!!!!!! I do have some aggression building up – a grand opportunity to get rid of it!!!
Oh!!!! I did spot this:
Need a night off?
Got a big event in September but still want to take part? Fear not. If you slip off the wagon just pay The Tipple Tax. Simply acknowledge your slight mishap and donate £20 to your JustGiving page.
*Laughing-out-loud*
Mr. Puddlecote had his salary in a recent post. I vaguely remember it at about £240,000 pa.
Those who fund it? Well they’ve got a charity shop on virtually every High Street, almost exclusively staffed by f…wits with time on their hands, thinking they’re doing their bit. Charity boxes, corporate sponsors, total putz who bequeath – and as you mention, wannabes who’ll run, bake, make lemonade etc. for them.
They – and BLF and BHF are utterly embedded – and these “charity shops” have virtually wiped out the old second hand shops as well as book exchanges.
Now the butt wipes’ are in on the carry bag tax that – as I point out – includes paper bags as well as those made of starch.
http://www.mullingscot.com/carry-bag-tax-forced-donations-to-charities.html
Oh and they’re salivating over the proposed 25p a pack tax on a pack of ciggies that they’d like to be handed over to their “front” – ASH. I assume that’ll mean 50p on 50g of rolling baccy.
I did search in this link for the salary of CRUK chief executive(s) and who funds it
Harpal Kumar – £240,000 a year, Brigitte.
“Nine executives at Cancer Research UK earn more than the Prime Minister, including chief executive Harpal Kumar, who pockets up to £240,000 a year”
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/582911/charity-salaries-donations-Cancer-Research-NSPCC-Amnesty-Olive-Cooke
A very good friend on the Facecloth posted CRUK’s latest money grubbing stunt about “dry September” – my reply was “fuck off” (not even in capitals BTW).
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