Imperial Party forum

thomas davison

13 June 2012 4:50 PMSweet and Sour CharityMany years ago, in a terrifying third world city, I and a colleague were looking for a safe place to stay. We didn�t want much, just a compound in which to hide from the local gang militias, have access to clean water, reliably electricity and a good phone link.
It chanced that we heard that such a place existed, owned by a charity. We went round, introduced ourselves and said that, if they would put us up, we would arrange for our office in London to donate to them what we would normally have paid for a good standard hotel.
We were in need, though not desperate. We wouldn�t have been much trouble, and there was space. Other journalists had, so far as we knew, stayed there recently. But the local representative of the charity turned us down flat. Maybe he didn�t like our paper, or me. That was his choice. But what astonished me most of all was that a charity would so breezily reject several hundred pounds, possibly more than a thousand if we stayed any length of time, in return for services that would have cost a tiny fraction of that.
I was told the charity didn�t need our money. They were already on the government payroll, and did not really rely on individual donations any more.
Since then, I have never given so much as a bent penny to the charity involved. I have also known what most people don�t know, that many major British charities are in fact semi-nationalised organisations. It is seared on my memory and so I often forget that other people don�t know this.
So I am particularly grateful to Christopher Snowdon of the Institute of Economic Affairs, who has produced a fascinating pamphlet �Sock Puppets: How the Government Lobbies Itself and Why� which can be found by going here
Its basic points are these. That many (but please note, by no means all ) British charities (some very major ones) get millions of pounds from central and local government; that the rules which used to ban them from engaging in political lobbying have been greatly relaxed, so that almost anything short of direct party political propaganda will probably be passed by the Charity Commission; and that in effect, British government money, ostensibly spent on good causes, often ends up being used to lobby the government to do things it wants to do anyway.
As Mr Snowdon rightly points out, these tend to be minority causes, not great popular movements. These need no lobbies to get themselves son to the political agenda.
Even so, it occurs to me as remarkable that increased spending on foreign aid, which is dubious in itself and also widely unloved, is a successful cause, whereas nobody much is defending the armed forces from cuts, and much of the treatment of men badly injured in wars is met through genuine charitable donations.
I quite like some of the organisations he picks on (such as those which campaign for better public transport), but I did laugh at his brief history of the �Child Poverty Action Group� which wrote in 1965 to the then premier, Harold Wilson about �at least half a million children in this country� who were �in homes where there is hardship due to poverty�.
Billions of pounds of welfare spending later, the same CPAG now speaks of 3.8 million children living in poverty. All that time, and all that money, and �child poverty� has increased sevenfold and more. Or perhaps something else has happened?
I�ll leave you some other figures from Mr Snowdon (he provides references) . The �voluntary� sector employs more than 600,000 people. Between 1997 and 2005, the income of Britain�s charities almost doubled, from �19.8 billion to �39.7 billion, with the biggest growth coming in grants and contracts from government departments (state funding rose by 38% in the first years f this century, while private donations rose by 7%).
27,000 charities depend on the state for more than three quarters of their income, more than a third of the sector�s total income - �12.8 billion in 2007-8) came from the state.
By the way, you will be pleased to know that most British charities remain small organisations which take no cash from the state. The problem is confined to the big organisations. Yet even among the big organisations some � for example the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the Donkey Sanctuary � are wholly independent of the state (so why, I ask, does the RNLI irritatingly use metric measurements for wave-heights in its advertisements? Feet, please).
My advice on charities is to check before giving. Do they take government cash? If so, how much? It will be in their accounts, though not always as obvious as it ought to be. And do they engage in propaganda? In which case, is it propaganda you don�t mind helping to support?
But in general, be aware of the fact that many very important lobbies are in fact funded by the government, so that it can lobby itself to do things it wants to do, but which you may not want done. I am not sure �charity� is the right name for such organisations. Mr Snowdon has done us a valuable service.

State-funded charities and NGOs usually campaign for causes which do not enjoy widespread support amongst the general public (e.g. foreign aid, temperance, identity politics). They typically lobby for bigger government, higher taxes, greater regulation and the creation of new agencies to oversee and enforce new laws. In many cases, they call for increased funding for themselves and their associated departments.

Urgent action should be taken, including banning government departments from using taxpayer�s money to engage in advertising campaigns, the abolition of unrestricted grants to charities and the creation of a new category of non-profit organisation, for organisations which receive substantial funds from statutory sources.

Charity begins at home.

2Anne · Joined: 04 May 2008 Posts: 399 Location: Norfolk

I wonder how many of these charities are linked to MP's and their wives. Just another form of Quango and a way for the gravy train list to line their pockets.
I was disgusted to see that the homo charity Stonewall is 80% funded by the government. I wonder who's idea this was??.
I imagine most of this was set up by the Labour govt. They think throwing money at losers will help them. In fact thats socialism in a nutshell.
God has given up meritocrasy as the way forward but the left wing tinkering is making society a worse place.