The past few days I've been thinking how to avoid the media overkill of the saviour of the world and of course the excuse we have for a Prime Minister's visit to America next week. This has resulted in me visiting blogs which I usually find are somewhat irrelevant to us here in Scotland and, if I'm truthful, so many are such expert bloggers they put me to shame.
The Devil's Kitchen has come up with a well written, candid post on UK charities (with a link to the Fake Charity site) and the closeness of some to the UK government. Like DK I always thought at least 80% of a charity's funding came from public donation. Please do read this article, I'm sure there is information in it that will surprise most of us.
My greatest disappointment is the funding Age Concern receive, because a very good friend of mine is a past president of that 'charity' and we've had many discussions about how it could help the elderly of Scotland more. Now I know why she couldn't put up a good argument. Alcohol Concern and Ash have always appeared to be sycophants rather than protesters and I gave them credance because of my own bad habits.
My charities are limited; I donate to the Ninewells Cancer Trust (they've finally got a website), they don't advertise and the staff are the creme de la creme of cancer research. They're a small unit with a world-wide impact and reputation plus all of the donations stay within the Trust here in Scotland. It wasn't until my Dad died of cancer 21 years ago that I found out about them and that was from one of the nurses at Dundee hospice. Any extra I have goes to the Salvation Army.
Thank you Dizzy for bringing this gross misapplication of public money to our attention. I do hope David Cameron et al see your post. Something has to be done and there is a very good suggestion here.
My thanks to Devils Kitchen for your post.
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6 comments:
Labour and Brown consider themselves a charity to which we are all their donors.
WHEN IS A CHARITY NOT A CHARITY?
When it's a front to advance a government's agenda.
Ach - there's nae honour onymair, nae ethics, nae morality - only career and advancement.
Exactly Oldrightie but sadly this will cast a blight on the 'real' charities.
Aye scunnert, sad that we've got to this stage. In my day a charity was some thing that raised money because the public agreed with it, that's what gave them their power with governments.
Thankfully like the Ninewells Cancer one there are a few left, but very few.
I was going to mention the 'charity' I did voluntary work for during the past few years, but I'm still so angry as to how the money is dispersed, I'll have to leave it. What a waste of hundreds of thousands and will unqualified and disinterested staff who were interviewed by local councillors.
This is indeed an excellent piece of work by DK et al.
The civitas proposal was interesting, too, except for th quibble that I'd use 50% and 25% rather than 70% and 30% as the thresholds. 50% because at 51%, the state would be more important than all other sources combined. 25% because that's the Competition Commission's market share threshold for considering a company a 'monopoly'.
I would agree with you IPP, it has to be 50% and 25%. Wasn't aware that 25% was the CC threshold, I thought it was 33%.
This is another of these articles which has to be kept to the fore or it will be ignored like every other democratic idea has in the past generation.
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