Longrider

Apparently, charities are paying out to fundraising companies more than the donor the chugger signs up will pay in a year – or in some cases, longer.

Fees paid to fundraising companies by UK charities for recruiting new donors often effectively wipe out the amount a person gives, Newsnight has learned.

Charities pay tens of millions of pounds every year to subcontracted firms who sign people up to direct debits on the street or doorstep.

But in some cases, it would take the average donor more than a year to cover the fee – the equivalent of about £100.

And…

The British Heart Foundation confirmed it paid the equivalent of £136 per signature. Cancer Research UK said it paid an average of £112 to recruit each donor and in total paid face-to-face fundraisers £3m a year. Guide Dogs said it paid out nearly £2m annually.

Christian Aid, Save the Children, Great Ormond Street, Amnesty and others also pay additional millions.

So if you think your money is going to the charity, think again. Then there’s the staff to pay and the executives with thier fat salaries.

Apparently, though, we are looking at it all wrong…

But Mr Aldridge said that although the costs of this sort of fundraising may be large, but they are justified by the returns.

“It may look to the outsider – to the uninformed outsider – as if all of their first-year donation is going to go to a third party but that’s not the only way of looking at it,” he said.

“And in my view, and in the view of most charities, it is not the most transparent and constructive way of looking at it.”

Ah, so we uninformed outsiders can’t do maths. It looks pretty straightforward to me – charities pay out money given in good faith to companies that are making a handsome profit. Not that I’ve anything against profit, but that is not why people give.

He added that overall the charities get £3-£4 back for every pound they pay the subcontractors, which he said was an excellent return on an investment.

I call that spin – but I’m being charitable.

All of that said, none of my charitable giving goes to these companies because I do as Umbongo does.

Always, always give locally and directly to a charity (preferably not one of the biggies – and never one which employs chuggers) or individuals or organisations that you know.

Good advice.

…Well, language, actually.

Vladimir recently wrote a piece with the above title, and as I’ve just had another experience of a silly argument, I thought I’d pinch it.

Over at Boaty & D’s they’ve been discussing morality, so I stepped in with a brief statement about the golden rule.

Irrespective of differences, there are always the core values – the golden rule if you like. Every society has a don’t murder and don’t steal element to its moral code.

I thought no more of it until a few days later Mr Rob took issue. Not with the concept, you will note, oh no…

@ Longrider

“Irrespective of differences, there are always the core values – the golden rule if you like. Every society has a don’t murder and don’t steal element to its moral code.”

Utterly incorrect. For example, for Spartan males, stealing and murder were actually requirements.

My immediate thought was “WTF!?!” Who mentioned the Spartans? I hadn’t thought about ancient civilisations and wasn’t discussing them. But I slung in a facetious riposte anyway.

Does Sparta still exist? I don’t think so.

Apparently, though, my use of the term “always” meant past as well as present tense.

@ Longrider

“always”

Is that word familiar to you at all? I’d almost forgotten how clever you are…..

The little ad hom was a reference to my irritation at Mr Rob’s use of reducto absurdum a few weeks back.

Okay, yes, “always” can be used to infer multiple tenses – so if someone always does something, then we infer that they always have and always will. What clinches it is the context in which it is used. So always did, does not necessarily mean still does, just as always does may not mean that they always did as things might have changed, and always will is no guarantee of past or present performance.

As is usual when someone misinterprets my words, I look again, just to see if it’s me, but, no, my comment is written throughout in the present tense. It takes a real twist of logic to get to the Spartans.

I recall a couple of years back I was criticised by a self-styled grammar pedant for dangling my participles and Mr Rob falls into the same trap as the anonymous commenter discussed then. Unfortunately, when pedants reach for their red editing pens with haste, anxious to squash the apparent crime against the English language, they forget that there is more to language than grammar (important though that is); there is also style, usage and context to consider. In the case of my use of “always” context is key.

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To be fair to Mr Rob, I don’t think he is a mong, he is clearly intelligent – I just couldn’t resist stealing Vladimir’s title.

Following on from the cat in a bin Lady story, we see numerous cat-haters telling us that the sight of someone putting a cat into a wheelie bin is “funny”. No, it isn’t, it is callous cruelty. Anyone who thinks it is funny needs to take a long hard look into their own psyche. We also get the usual bunkum wheeled out whenever people want to have a go about cats and the people they share their lives with.

Myth number one; Cat shit and gardens.

This is the first to get rolled out. I like my garden and take pride in what I grow. Mrs L and I share our lives with a dozen cats. Each of our neighbours has a similar number. So, we are surrounded by a colony of somewhere in the region of thirty plus cats. And, yes, they shit in the garden. Unlike the dogs who roam about, cats have the decency to bury their doings – usually in my borders. So what? Cat shit, like all shit is organic. It decomposes in the soil doing no harm whatsoever. I have not lost one plant due to cats. People who complain about this are simply looking for a justification for their dislike. If they were honest and merely confined themselves to saying that they don’t like cats, fair enough – they would go down in my estimation, but I’d respect their opinion after a fashion. If they come out with crap about cats shitting in the garden, I’ll treat them with the contempt they so clearly deserve.

Myth number 2; cat owners are enabling the murder of wildlife and that is cruel.

Bollocks, frankly. The domestic cat has lived alongside man since ancient times. Despite that, it is still a wild animal at heart. The domestication is only partial in that the animal is never fully tameable in the same way that we tame and control dogs. Cats are scavengers and hunters – taking what they can from where they can. If it’s a plate of Whiskas, that’s fine and dandy. They are just as happy crunching on a rodent. Man has generally found this relationship useful, preferring to have felines in the house to a nest of rodents. At least the cats don’t shit inside all over your food stores.

If left to their own devices without neutering programmes, they would exist in colonies of females with kittens and roaming toms. The queens would be kittening several times a year and the numbers would increase dramatically. Without a supply of food and population control from people, their effect on the local wildlife would be significantly worse.

Cats kill. They are carnivores. This is not cruelty and cannot be compared to the casual cruelty of a person knowingly throwing someone’s pet into a wheelie bin, deliberately causing suffering. Anyone who attempts to compare these two (Guardianista) again, gets the contempt they so richly deserve.

Myth Number 3; cats should be kept indoors.

Unless you are into the ritualised cruelty of de-clawing and preventing the animal from following any of its instincts, this is out of the question. Cats need to walk their territory. It is as much a part of their instinct as hunting and scavenging. So you don’t like cats wandering into your garden? There are products on the market that deter them, so buy one and put it in the garden if it bothers you that much.

One neighbour when we lived in Bristol, started shooting at our cats using a pea-shooter. I didn’t know who it was, but later spoke to someone who did. She wouldn’t divulge the name, so I reminded her that he was breaking the animal welfare act and if I did find out, I would take the matter up with the view to seeing him prosecuted. One thing I will not tolerate is animal cruelty. My warning had the desired effect, the pea-shooting stopped a day or so later.

We also put a sand-pit in our garden to encourage our cats to use it as a litter. It worked a treat – every other cat in the vicinity used it as well.

Whenever I see discussions such as the ones witnessed recently following the bin episode, I am reminded why, on balance, I like cats more than I like people.

And, just for all you cat haters out there:

AlJahom comments on the reaction of Andrew Mitchell to the Pakistan floods. The article he links to is behind the Times’ paywall, but the gist is, we aren’t giving enough and people who are paid bonuses should give some of that.

After a harrowing trip to meet flood victims in Pakistan, a cabinet minister has called on workers who receive bonuses to donate some of the money to charity.

AJ is unsurprisingly scathing. As someone who is self-employed, I don’t get a bonus. Actually, at the moment, things are pretty tight all round, but that’s another story.

I have given everything to Pakistan that I feel it deserves, which is precisely nothing. I gave this to every other demand for a handout where taxpayers’ money had been given. As a taxpayer, I have already given without being asked if I thought that the cause was okay. I do not therefore, as a matter of principle, give to any cause or any charity that takes money from the tax coffers.

Sure, on a human level I can empathise with those who have become dispossessed by the floods. However, when we are criticised for not giving enough or not acting quickly enough or whatever the latest whinge is, I feel even less inclined to give. Charity is something given freely with no strings attached. The gift is not a right, nor should it be demanded and those who demand, don’t get as far as I am concerned.

Perhaps what we are seeing is giving fatigue – there is only so much people can cough up and it is always the same pockets being delved after all.

There’s an old cliché about those who don’t learn from history – they are destined to repeat it. This always assumes that they would not want to repeat it. Increasingly I am inclined toward the idea that they do want to repeat it.

I’ve been somewhat distracted this past week, so am a bit late to the party on the Ciggy Busters debacle. For those of you who have not been paying attention, Ciggy Busters is the brainchild of media artist in residence at the Hundred of Hoo Comprehensive school, Margherita Gramegna. Sixth formers are filming themselves snatching cigarettes from smokers while shouting “ciggy busters” and then running away. Now, if this was a staged event with willing participants, apart from being on poor taste, there would be nothing wrong with it. However, they strayed from using willing participants to attacking real passers-by.

As others have noted along the way when discussing this, there is a real risk of someone lashing out and people getting hurt – not all of them undeserving.

However, I don’t particularly want to rake over what’s already been said. It’s just that following my musing on the willingness of the British people to embrace their own enslavement, we are seeing another manifestation of Orwell’s nightmare scenario unravelling before our eyes. Those of us who are able to recall the middle years of the Twentieth Century – either directly or via our parents – will be all too aware of the turmoil caused and the suffering endured as a consequence of the totalitarianism that spread across Europe. Whether Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s USSR, common themes endured. The enemy without and within was one. There always needs to be an enemy. As Orwell put it, we have always been at war with Eastasia – if not them, then Eurasia. The enemy can be anyone; who, is of little consequence. Hitler chose the Jews. These days, we have smokers, drinkers, fat people, take your pick. The techniques are the same; demonise, denormalise, turn them into less than human, erode the basic human decency that empathises with others.

There is little difference in behaviour between what happened in Chatham High street last month and what happened in Berlin in November 1938. Okay, less widely orchestrated and less violent, perhaps, but the principle is the same. A group of people physically assaulted law abiding citizens because they were outside the control group. If you smoke, you are fair game to these zealots and they can behave as they please, because as everyone knows, smoking is bad for you and these days cigarette packets tell you it is bad for those around you as well (with not a shred of supporting evidence offered) – so assaulting a smoker and taking away legally purchased smoking materials isn’t assault and theft at all, it’s a public service. It’s “fun”, it’s a media project. Kristallnacht, it isn’t. Maybe not, precisely, it is however but a short step away.

The children doing this, know no better. Well, we like to kid ourselves that they are just children and are being manipulated by the responsible[sic] adults. Yet I recall when I was that age. I knew full well what had happened in Nazi Germany and the USSR. I knew because adults made damned sure I knew. They wanted me to be aware of and learn from the past. They wanted me to understand what it was that my grandparents’ generation went to war for, to defeat and keep from these shores. I had also read Nineteen Eighty Four and been chilled to read of the children encouraged by the state to betray their parents. That, I believed in the naïve nineteen seventies, could never happen here. Not in Blighty.

When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”

Adolf Hitler

He was right, wasn’t he?

Here we are seventy years on from the sacrifice of the few and our children are being indoctrinated using the same insidious techniques of our erstwhile enemies. And, as Anna Raccoon reminds us, it isn’t just the indoctrination of the children that draws us closer to the cesspit of totalitarianism. Local councils and their officials delight in behaviour that would have made the Standartenführers proud. The Third Reich may not have lasted a thousand years, but its spirit lives on in Sandwell, West Midlands and my old stamping ground of the Medway towns. It almost makes me ashamed to be a Man of Kent.

By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, it is apparent that the blood-letting and losses of the preceding century have been forgotten and the consequent lessons failed to be learned.

It’s been a bit quiet here this past couple of days. I’ve been a bit distracted. On Wednesday I planned to nip to the local town as I needed to collect some medication from the pharmacy. The bike wouldn’t start. Well, to be more precise, I couldn’t switch off the alarm, so it was immobilised.

I tried using the alternative key fob, just in case the battery was flat in the one I was using. Nope, that didn’t work. When Mrs L came back from her errand, we swapped out the batteries in her key fob. Still no joy.

A bit of Googling told me that this type of alarm, the Meta 357T is prone to failure at anything from five to eight years old. This one is eight years old… Meta’s website was about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

I checked the wiring as best I could, but this thing is attached to the bike’s loom like a keeper to the nerve system of its host. I tried calling the dealer who fitted it, but the number was constantly engaged. As I have to return to the UK on Saturday, I called my insurance breakdown company in the hope that they could get the bike to a dealer and have them remove it.

There is no equivalent of the RAC or AA in France. One’s motor insurance covers basic recovery. In this instance up to a value of €200. The closest recovery firm did not have the facility to carry bikes. The next one they tried would, but coming out to me and taking the bike to Montpellier would cost €400 and I would have to pick up the difference. Frankly, €400 for taking the bike to the dealer – even though it is about 60km - is outrageous and I was unwilling to pay that.

I tried the UK dealer again and finally got through. I described the fault and, yes, it did look like the unit has failed. However, it is fairy easily bypassed and he explained how. Although the unit is wired into the main loom, if you remove the connection to the starter solenoid and the fuel pump, remaking the original connections, the alarm is no longer effective. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Certainly I’m back on the road and it didn’t cost me a penny, which is good, but it does seem rather simple to disable. Okay, so I had to remove the fairing, but once that was done, it was a couple of minutes with a soldering iron. I was expecting something much more complicated.

Once the bike is back in the UK and I take it in for a service, I’ll ask them to take the damned thing out and leave it out. I very much doubt I’ll want to put an alarm on a bike again as this is the second occasion where an alarm has left one of my bikes disabled. The last time, I had fitted it so could easily remove it. BMWs seem to be a low theft risk and the inconvenience when the alarm fails is more trouble than it is worth. At least a big lock can be taken off when you want to ride the bike.

Every so often, an issue raises its head that tests my libertarian instincts. Car clamping on private property is one such. Now it is to be outlawed.

Lynne Featherstone, the Home Office minister, will announce plans to curb the activities of clampers in England and Wales.

Ms Featherstone will say the rules should be brought into line with those in Scotland, where clamping on private land was banned after a judge said it amounted to ‘extortion’ and ‘theft’.

On the one hand, private property should be just that. On the other, clamping is trespass against the vehicle. The get-out clause of a notice is supposed to be an agreement that the motorist will be clamped. However, all too often, such notices are poorly displayed and people may believe that as they are visiting the property owner, they are parking legitimately.

I have two distinct problems with clamping. The first is that the release fee is disproportionate to the offence. Parking is at best a nuisance. To extort a three-figure sum in the form of a release fee for such a minor issue is grotesque. The other problem is that it places the motorist at a disadvantage should they wish to contest the charge. They cannot effectively fight the matter while the clamper has their vehicle and all they want to do is get to their next destination. And trying to reason with unthinking jobsworths while under duress is bad for the blood pressure.

Mrs L was clamped once when she was visiting a hospital on work business. That she was there for a legitimate reason (indeed, an essential reason) made no difference. That she did not have the means on her to pay the ransom made no difference. She had to borrow from a member of staff at the hospital to get her vehicle back.

A second situation occurred some years later at Parkway station in Bristol. She had paid for her parking ticket but it had slipped down the dashboard, so the attendant did not see it. She was issued with a penalty notice. We fought this and won. Had she been clamped, we would have had to fight to get the money back – which is that much more difficult. It is always easier to withhold money than to try and claim it back once it has been extorted.

So, on balance I am happy to see clamping go, as the practice borders on the criminal. I’m inclined to agree with the judge’s statement that it is tantamount to extortion and theft – not least that the people employed to do it are all too often jobsworths unable and unwilling to make sensible decisions about circumstance and the release fees are exorbitant. But, on the other hand, I suspect that I am betraying my libertarian principles on property rights…

In typical hand-wringing fashion, the Guardianista believe that France should repay the money exhorted from the newly independent Haiti.

In an open letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy published in the French newspaper Libération, 90 leading academics, authors, journalists and human rights activists from around the world urged the French government to pay Haiti back for the 90m gold francs Haitians were forced to pay as a price for their independence. (Full the sake of full disclosure, I am no impartial observer of the proposal: I helped draft the text of the letter, and played no small role in soliciting the signatures. In fact, the scores of intellectuals I contacted needed little prodding to sign on.)

This is much the same argument as the one demanding that Britain apologise for the slave trade. And as such, is equally wrong. Haitians overthrew their French masters in, wait for it, 1791. Yup, Isabel MacDonald wants the modern French state – in the middle of an economic recession – to pay for the actions of Charles X in 1825 when he subsequently demanded a compensation payment of 150m gold francs from the Haitian rebels.

Once again, we have historical revisionism going on. To today’s eyes, this was reprehensible – as was the original enslavement. However, that means judging the people of the time by today’s standards, not their own. And, since when was visiting the sins of the fathers on their sons – or grandsons, or great grandsons – an acceptable idea?

No, France should not repay that which has long since been spent by people no  longer alive. It’s done, past, history. There it should stay. By all means, assist Haiti rebuild, but France does not owe a debt – any more than Britain owes a debt to Africa or Italy owes a debt for the Roman occupation of northern Europe and much of the Mediterranean.

Only in the land of the Guardian does there exist such stupidity. History is something to learn from, not to agonise over or to repay debts run up by the long dead. They are dead, let them lie.

While out photographing the common blue, I also noted this interesting specimen. I think it’s a wasp spider.

I’ve been out taking pictures again. This is the common blue butterfly – and around these parts it is very common. This image does tend to highlight the big problem with macro photography. The depth of field is so narrow that the tips of the wings are out of focus, this despite the lens being stopped down to f18 – the maximum available.

Oh, well, overall, I’m pleased with the image so far. I’ll keep trying to get a better one, though.