We are all constantly in the UK inundated, indeed well-so in our faces, with heart rendering pleas for us ordinary people (mostly working-class however because THEY are the most generous?) to urgently donate money to apparently needy and worthy causes, desperate for our hard-earned cash, aren’t we?

We are told incessantly that even our small sums ‘donated by standing order regularly’ (weekly/monthly) will prevent all kinds of disasters and save ALL from impending catastrophes not just in this Country but furthermore in the rest of the World as well? Nothing could be further from the truth though could it, eh?

Currently, the latest signal to reach the airways is from the United Nations who have warned that the largest humanitarian crisis since WW2 is imminently at hand in Africa. An increasing number of people there [now estimated at some twenty million needing aid of at least 3.5 BILLION pounds (£3,500,000,000) in the next few months] are otherwise heading for famine starvation, primarily in Yemen (S Arabia), but also in Somalia (E Africa), South Sudan (E Africa), and Nigeria (W Africa). Now why is this, you may well ask? Well, drought as always in such lands is always a contributory cause, but the main reason is conflict of course, coupled with the greed, corruption, and power lust of those in rule, isn’t it?

Now, those at the UN want to place a large part of the blame on us all, as it is said that there has been a shocking failure in international response to the problems in those countries. By that, they mean of course that you haven’t dug deep enough into your limited pockets to provide aid, don’t they? Nothing could be further from the truth though, eh?

It is quite true though that there HAS been a shocking failure in international response, but that is nothing to do with us providing aid or that kind of thing, and the organisation that needs to look at itself in the mirror is the UN itself, don’t you think? This crap ‘not fit-for-purpose’ outfit was set-up in 1945 (after we experienced the second world war in just 25 years), targeted exactly to stop ALL conflicts and it is its ineptitude, absented commitment, and complete lack of action, that constantly causes the kind of problems we see now in these four countries. Moreover, that has been allowed to happen also to an extent in many other places around the globe over the past eighty years – perhaps the most vilely disgusting of all, the recent genocide perpetrated in Syria [resulting in a possibly unrecoverable catastrophe across the entire continent of Europe if not the world (resulting from the refugees)], and even that has followed the dreadful atrocities carried out in the Middle East in the pursuit of land grab and religious dogma and fervour, as well as terrorist outrages around the world by the equally religious cretins of ISIS dragging the name of Islam into the gutter.

Every time there is a human cataclysm we get the less than wonderful UN pontificating on the fact that “lessons have been learned” (the classic phrase that is trotted-out everywhere to excuse the inexcusable, eh?), and how it must not be allowed to happen again, don’t we? But NOTHING has actually been learnt, no changes are ever made, and you don’t have to be an Einstein to know that it is only a matter of time before the next tragedy confronts us, do you?

On top of all that we have in the UK to face the stark reality that our stupid government, at the behest of the ‘false’ do-gooders, are committed to an offensive (to most of us anyway?) level aid budget that rises like Topsy, on a self-imposed target, year-on-year – it currently stands at an eye watering 12.2 BILLION pounds (£12,200,000,000). This not only is at a time when essential services at home are in financial crisis, but more importantly when a massive amount of this money is simply squandered and does no good whatsoever. [A comment on renewable energy overseas aid was made, by someone who should know, that “Projects are negligently conducted and scandalously wasteful” and that simply sums-up the whole situation, doesn’t it?].

Some forty percent of our aid money ‘extracted’ from you the taxpayer goes through other organisations like the UN and EU, but we also give large sums directly to Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India (when the likes of Pakistan & India are running their own bloody space programmes no less, eh?).

Well, on top of all that, you certainly can fully expect the begging bowls to be out again in great numbers over this current situation in parts of Asia & Africa, as well as those of the usual names in the fund grabbing frame, backed by a clarion call PLEADING for your help, and you will see ALL the major charity players in the UK at it (to name a few, like the Red Cross, Save the Children, Oxfam, ActionAid, and the others of Disasters Emergency group, and their ilk) being at the front of the queue to tug at your heart strings and bring tears to your eyes, to force you to give. Moreover, these major players are also given large sums of public money, as well as that what we personally donate to them.

If you do make a contribution (and in UK we are a stupidly generous lot), will you do any good at all, or will you simply extend the misery of these poor such souls and their pitiful nations, and forever promote continuing the unsustainable growth levels of populations in countries statistically unable to supporting their excessive numbers of inhabitants for their environment, or can we ever in fact resolve these or similar problems for the future by aid funding the unhelpable, do you think?

The biggest problem that some of us have these days in donating to the BIG boys in the charity stakes (they that have an insatiable appetite for our money), is that much of it doesn’t actually get to do what we gave it for. That starts of course, through the astronomical sums (by our givers’ standards anyway?) being raked-off in salaries by the Chief Executive Officers together with their lieutenants, as well as by the over-large salaries paid-out for the rest of the crowd, employed in such ‘so called’ charities. The days have long gone when charities were run and staffed by dedicated selfless caring men and women with a mission in life to help others, haven’t they? Yep, these juggernaut cash generating machines are BIG business these days, so house the smartarse personally financially ambitious chancers, who don’t give a shit about the actual cause promoted, as long as it is simply offers a fantastically superior living that provides a good but undeserved rewarding career path, with the expectation of being head-hunted by an even bigger charity (having even more money to be creamed-off), and to be lauded (possibly with honours) and mistakenly revered as being a most worthy of human beings? Beats working in a ‘commercial’ business, don’t you think?

As reported below in a previous post here two years ago [and salaries to the richly undeserved will have gone even further UP since then]:-

‘Many-many dozens of them raking in over £100,000 in salary (the details are frequently cloaked in secret by the charities): Marie Stopes International (family planning charity) top pay is £290thousand with another at £200thousand: Save the Children pays someone £234thousand, another £163thousand, and a further twenty also over £100thousand: Cancer Research UK (this year’s London Marathon official charity) is said to pay their CEO £220thousand: Oxfam CEO is getting over £120thousand: the dozen overseas aid Disasters Emergency charities themselves with some thirty people on six figure salaries. Are you happy to see your generous donation lining the pockets of the fat-cats?’

[For comparison, the British Prime Minister gets paid by us £150,000, Cabinet Ministers £135,000 and our MPs £75,000]

There are never-ending opportunities for these organisations to make public appeals – reasons like wars, floods, earthquakes, cyclones, drought, hurricanes, famines, genocides, volcanoes, tsunamis’, locusts, typhoons, disease outbreaks, to name the regular ones; so, like buses, even after a gap another one will be coming along soon after the next one, won’t it? Often even, though the dangers are known, the consequences predictable, the necessary actions or precautions evident, nothing is done until such things actually occur to provoke another human disaster – and then of course it is too late by far, isn’t it? [Inevitably, that of course is all down to the irresponsible people in charge, and is not recoverable or achieved by ‘aid-givers ‘ like us after the event’, is it?].

But the bulk of your money doesn’t normally go to their frontline charitable good causes, does it? No, because it is whisked away and used simply to run the whole bleeding  show and that will mean spending an absolute fortune on staff and advertising, to coerce you to send them your money.

Every time you see a primetime TV advert for a charity you support, you KNOW that your cash is paying for it and for the profits of the TV company showing it and the media companies producing it, every time you donate to a charity shop or buy something there, you are paying for their high street rents and management staff, every time you sign-up in the street to give, you are paying the salary and commission of the suave male persuader, every time you put coins in a sweet smiling girl street collector’s tin, just think that most times it well may just be paying for their time collecting, eh?

In this Country, we however DO have an extraordinary bunch of ‘ordinary sized’ charities, staffed by dedicated, focused, consistent, caring, individuals, that have to survive on very limited funds because the extravagant and grossly inefficient big brand boys with their dubious negative fundraising practices, are creaming-off all the major money available – but these minnows still do enormously good work, without adequate recognition or support. Perhaps that is where your next generous donation of money should go, perhaps? [The top 100 fundraising charities grabbed a record 9.5 BILLION pounds (£9,500,000,000) last year alone].

[Be as always generous in what you are able to gift, but just be more careful who you give it to, perhaps?]