David Miliband earns £680,000 a year from International Rescue Committee. A true socialist. I preferred it when it was run by the Tracy family. At least you could see where the strings went to.
It’s so funny you mentioned him, Jeremy. It was when he lost the Labour leadership to his brother and slouched off to head the International Rescue Organisation, at a salary of over £300,000 that I first noticed something rotten in the charity industry.
Ha ha yes. They even nicked the name. Favourite Thunderbird? I think mine was Three. Such an elegant design.
I always felt rather sorry for John ‘Billy No Mates’ Tracy in Thunderbird 5. I vote for a swap: John and EOS down here, for the Miliband brothers up there. Without any form of communication. At all.
Yes. He did seem like a lonely soul. Oh the Milibands. They’re like two annoying kids that think they’re helping but are just getting in the way and making things worse.
Cynical old age and hindsight suggests they were all gay or incels. No holidays, no deputies, no hanky panky. An unused swimming pool mysteriously free of carbon but no oiks to clean it. Lady Penelope looked like a go-er but surely not Parker. Just Stop Thunderbirds boats around the shore. Miliband would shut them down.
Charity in its truest sense has no intermediary; it is the direct giving of succour to one’s fellow man in distress from the kindness of one’s heart (and maybe the generosity of one’s wallet), pace the ladies with their sandwiches.
In a second order one can still consider charitable those who band together, probably locally, to promote a noble cause that could never be commercial or be deemed the necessary recipient of government largesse. Nobody is remunerated and the annual sums of money involved are a few thousand pounds at most; those involved give hours of their time to get something done. I’m the treasurer of a couple of such micro charities and while I can’t claim they occupy the same moral high ground as feeding and clothing the poor I think they still count as charitable. Whether they should get taxpayer subsidy in the form of gift aid is another question; I tend to think not.
Then we have the national “charities” with CEOs, multi million budgets, offices, DEI policies etc. These are not charities at all, in an true sense of the word, but arms of government, part of the quango state, receiving millions of pounds from the taxpayer to fund their activities and lobbying the government to do what the government intends to do anyway, lending a spurious justification for action by their apparent independence and charitable motivation. Worse still, sometimes (as Christopher Snowden often exposes) charities form sock puppet clones of themselves in order to make it appear that there is multiple demand for action. And it’s always socialist or nanny state action that’s demanded.
Thanks so much Paul. This is a perfect summary. Snowden is excellent on this stuff. The Last Orders podcast is a must-listen for me. Best of luck with your endeavours.
Any charity that spends large amounts of money on hiring expensive people to run a public reeducation campaign, rather than actually helping the objects of their charity. For example, from the RSPCA:
✚ attract the best talent and
make the RSPCA a great place
to work
✚ move to hybrid working
✚ sell our former head office at Southwater and set up new, more accessible offices, so we
can recruit talented candidates from a far wider geographical area
✚ improve our focus on equity, diversity and inclusion
✚ launch a people and culture plan offering additional support and benefits to our staff
I very much doubt that the animal rescued by the RSPCA cares very much about the skin colour of its rescuer.
Yes Jeremy. The whole industry seems to be one of Britain’s few growth areas at the moment. There have been quite a few news reports about the RSPCA morphing into an activist organisation over the last couple of years. Though in fairness, I think they got in a new boss fairly recently after acknowledging this. Just from what I remember. But your point still stands.
Many, many years ago - could even have been the last century - a friend went to work at the NSPCC. Not only did she leave the job quite quickly, but she cancelled her standing order monthly donation to the charity. It was that bad.
Hi Bettina. Yes. It seems a lot of our ‘charities’ just arent any more. Plus, so many are funded directly by government, that they have become little more than NGOs, or mini quangos. There’s not much accountability and a lot of it seems to be built around activism rather than helping people. And of course ‘awareness raising’, which is just advertising really.
Charlotte Gill is excellent on all this. Her Substack reveals a horror show of government waste in this general area.
I think like government, the big boys have become too big. It’s a difficult area to tackle because no politician wants to be labelled as someone who ‘hates charity’. Which is inevitably how any calls for reform would be spun.
Maybe this has all got to get so bad, that a wholesale reform will happen. Government just gets bigger and bigger and bigger .............and then it bursts 🙏🏻
We need to make sure the new bosses are us, the people, in charge of our own communities with direct democracy in action and with taxes going upwards from local government to central government - whose only remit is to look after borders, defence and nationally recognised safety standards. We don't need Westminster to tell us what to eat and how to clean our teeth like a modern day tyrant King with a bad case of overreach!
Unfortunately we seem to have generated a culture where every problem is somebody else’s fault, and government’s job to fix. The answer is certainly government should “do less,” but that isn’t a vote winner.
On a separate note, after walking past a homeless guy outside Liverpool St station on my morning commute for weeks, I decided to talk to him one day. I finished up buying him a coffee most mornings until he wasn’t there one day and never came back. A surprisingly rewarding experience.
Exactly Martin. The government should do less certainly. Or at least target their (our) resources to actually helping people.
I would not be against a government programme which took money from all the DEI training for instance and put it into a task force to tackle rough sleeping. Even if it was £millions. Not by handing out soup, but by taking people off the street and putting them through a proper rehabilitation programme. But for all sorts of reasons that wont happen. And of course they would never do it properly and just end up handing out tents, like in San Francisco.
In London of course we have the additional problem of many of these ‘beggars’ being part of foreign gangs who control the most lucrative pitches. There’s a whole post to be written just on that!
Hi Julie. These small charities get crowded out I think by the big players, with massive advertising budgets. Also, the ‘cuter’ your cause, the more money it can raise. So it’s not a level playing field.
Sadly true. Big State = more tax, more debt, everything worse. But Labour will most definitely not shrink the State, so it's more practical to consider how one might cope with its continued over-reach.
Re the chuggers, I found it easier to overcome my innate good manners and just blank them once I started regarding them as the duplicitous, smiley-faced robbers they really are.
Yes, it’s only going to get bigger, hungrier and more intrusive.
Yes. I won’t stop for them either. Though these young people are just another cog in the machine. Just trying to earn a few quid, not really considering the big picture. It’s just another industry I think Richard. But what they are selling passers by is a tiny slice of virtue….
> than on equally obvious factors like alcoholism, family breakdown, and most manifest of all, drug abuse.
Sure, but OTOH the wealthy have always blamed the problems of the poor on their own bad habits, no? But strangely, when even the detestable proles earn enough to put a roof over their heads, somehow their deplorable habits seem to moderate. When I was a kid a homeless person was almost unknown, let alone entire parks taken over by tents. Yes, bad habits are observed in those tent villages, but when people have absolutely no hope, they do self destructive things. And some of the people there have jobs and wish to hell they could get away from there, but with rents higher than some people's entire monthly income, the tent village is the way it is. Or sleep in your car. Easy to give up tho.
Good point. Social problems are lifestyle choices the wealthier you are. The wealthier classes don't want to restrain their own lifestyles, which has a far bigger impact the further down the economic ladder you go.
I agree Ray. I don’t see this as an OTOH issue. I’m not saying these people are always responsible for their own fate. And drugs are often the ‘rational choice’, for people at rock bottom, as is welfare dependency for many at the bottom of the social ladder.
I’m not ‘the wealthy’ nor do I dismiss these people as ‘detestable proles’. But I do think we need to acknowledge that an awful lot of these people are living from fix to fix.
I'm not throwing stones at you personally, but the attitudes I mention are 'out there'. Besides they are not entirely wrong. Funny thing, in 'Hillbilly Elegy' Vance is more critical of his people than sympathetic to them. Thing is that, as with all woke pandering the The Victims, too much coddling does The Victims more harm than good. Yes I'm sympathetic but 90% of the fix ... ooops, Freudian slip there ... is with people doing what Vance did and simply refusing to fail. But working people really do need affordable rents and living wages. Were those things available *then* I'd take a hard line on people who still choose to loose.
Yes sorry Ray. I didn’t mean to come across that way. It’s a tricky problem I think. People at the bottom of the pile are offered the choice between x and y. And then they are often pilloried for not choosing Z. We need to create a world, not through welfare, where they can take more control of their own lives. Though years of dependency would make even that an issue I think.
Sure. The dependency trap becomes an entire culture. US Black Victim gangsta culture is an example. It's at least a generation to change that even if the entire nation made it a declared priority. Ditto hillbilly culture or, so I hear, in the UK the formerly industrial areas have a similar culture of resentment, failure and despair. BTW no 'sorry' needed, you have yet to say something that might require an apology.
Thanks Richard. It’s a problem everywhere. And at the risk of sounding like my Mum tutting at the News-very sad. It’s a lot of quite young people with wasted potential and ruined lives.
I think a bit of tough love, but love nonetheless, is required. Though I think we’re more likely instead to copy the failed policies that have caused such havoc on the US west Coast.
I used to run a drug education charity in London so I am aware of some of the issues. I also wrote to Tess May and Patel as home secretaries. All I got back was the same crap about being tough on crime...
Such a good article! Just read. Totally agree - like the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, he made a good case for cracking down on the bottom level of crime as the best way of tackling higher order crime because it removes the foundations. He was a fan of Rudy Giuliani's approach which cleaned up NYC 30 years ago (now declined again under the Dems):
"In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Department – at the instigation of Commissioner Bill Bratton – adopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "broken windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained" (from Wiki)
Thanks Bettina. Yes ‘Broken Windows’ is a good policy I think. The left have tried to discredit it a bit, but on any level, how can, ‘making the urban environment a better place to live for everyone’ ever be a ‘bad’ idea?
Most of these problems are solvable. And I don't think we have a massive drug problem or we'd be falling over bodies in the street. A bit like some cities in America. But if we don't deal with it now, we know what's coming.
Agreed. But I can see it going that way. I do pretty much ‘fall over bodies in the street’ every day. Well not exactly , but pretty much. These people are the epitome of ‘vulnerable’ but no one seems to want to help them. Not as attractive as some other victim groups maybe..🤔
I got an up close and personal insight into the inner workings of charities some years ago and since then I haven't contributed to any - you just don't know what they will spend the money on. My charity money goes to my church, run by priests and where I know what the money is spent on, because I see it (or sit on it - heated seating in an unheated church!).
There is a tipping point in any organisation, beyond which the org becomes self-serving and generates activities to sustain its own existence. It usually loses sight of its purpose at that same time and the decline sets in. Government and "non-governmental" government organisations long since passed that point. Regulations now exist to provide work for the Regulators. Then only way these end is (a) revolution - societal or technological or (b) everyone ignores them, starving them of attention or money. I do wonder where we are headed now.
Thanks Pilgrim. A few comments saying broadly the same thing. I used to give to these charities. Then I saw how they worked. Now I don’t give to them.
There’s probably a broad scandal here if anyone serious wanted to investigate. Of course literally no one does.
I did read one book a few years ago called The Great Charity Scandal by David Craig. Which was illuminating. But it was quite a niche publication I think.
You are definitely right about the ongoing corruption of the big charities. They seem to have completely forgotten their actual task.
There’s a ‘but’ this time though. I’m less convinced by the free market these days. With Railway’s, Energy Companies, the water companies and the FANGs as the example, I think it is more klepto-capitalism.
That’s fair P. But I often find, when you dig a bit deeper these ‘privatised’ utilities aren’t really privatised at all. That’s certainly true of the railways. Much of which is still government own or subject to a huge amount of regulation. I don’t know about water. But a good example is the housing ‘market’ which has the government, at least indirectly, being in charge of both supply (through planning regs) and demand (through interest rates and mortgage rules and wider economic factors like money printing etc).
But yes. It is klepto-capitalism. Though of course the left, not 100% unfairly, might say no, that’s just capitalism.
Interesting. I wonder when that was. Maybe under Blair? (Not saying he’s the bogeyman, just seems quite a New Labour change.)
The Big Society as in idea wasn’t so bad in it’s pure essence I think. Of course Cameron didn’t sell it as an idea very well. A posh boy telling us all to pull together in little groups, like a House at Eton, was never going to wash.
Nailed it: Big Society. Some bright Tory SPAD (oxymoron?) worked out Government could hand money to charities and they could deliver public services cheaper, as there was no need to employ Civil Servants, maintain buildings etc. Austerity by outsourcing. Except, the savings never came and the Government money created a second huge bureaucracy in the charity sector. As an added bonus, every fifteen seconds the Government gets sued, with our money, by charities that object to Government Policies, defending itself with our money. Then losing and paying damages; with our money. Genius.
What's also NEVER allowed to be said, even in a world where "behavioural economics" rules supreme over "actual economics" of the Adam Smith variety.
There's a huge behavioural impact of (1) corporate charities and (2) colossal taxation which isn't, as you say, pitched at property rights, law and order and public services. Anyone earning more than the median is harangued for "not paying their fair share" and further harangued if they do....but it's always about taxes. The message blaring out is: paying your taxes is what you do to help those less fortunate. The message being received is: if only you got on board with paying even more taxes, you wouldn't need to worry about those less fortunate.
Yes. People now see the government as the ultimate ‘problem solver’ in their lives, rather than themselves. They’re not thick or lazy for taking this attitude. As you say, they have been told this is how it should work, and that message is reinforced at every level.
Rings a bell about the conflict between 'The Broken Windows Theory' and the 'Parable of the broken window.' Frederic Bastiat 1850.
One, that if a broken window is left unrepaired, the others will be smashed too, i.e. disorder breeds disorder, society breaks down. The other, that, if a window gets broken then the repair benefits the local glazier. i.e. false growth, running to stand still. The effort best made elsewhere, adding to society. In both cases.
Leading to 'give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish...' etc etc.
In LSO's stated case the Charity, and chuggers' efforts, should be put to better use rather than support an ever increasing dependent community. Cyclical self justification. Neither can exist without the other. Even the benevolent free sandwich givers are as guilty of supporting dependency.
Not easy, I'm not proposing the Work House of Dicken's days. The Big Issue tried but failed leaving us with sleeping bag/dog/high st people with self employed status. Self esteem is not a tradeable commodity when folk just take the mickey.
There are houses to be built, pot holes to be mended and if we're not careful, wars to be fought. Perhaps we should stop rewarding the feckless. More stick, less carrot. Buck up or you'll get a uniform but who'd enforce it?
Slightly flippant, but does anyone read those very dull charity newsletters for regular contributors? They are so universally bland that I wonder if tedium pays somehow - in a similar but quite different way to the attractive energy of the chuggers described.
Not sure about those Ross. But I regularly get a ‘magazine’ from Camden council, I shudder at the cost of sending it to every home/dumping it in every hedge, in Camden. I which CC praises itself for how diverse and amazing it is.
> So maybe it can deliver a teeny tiny amount of growth after all.
Ideologues who want to 'own' the Chinese miracle should remember that whereas the CPP did indeed open up the economy to Market Forces the entire thing was carefully planned many decades into the future and closely regulated at all times. It seems to me that the Chinese are an advertisement for what an all-powerful but yet prudent government can achieve. This was nothing at all like what our TFM (The Free Market) fundamentalists preach. What I learn from the Chinese is that government interventions can be quite useful, but they should be fast and precise not slow and bureaucratic.
Yes Ray. I agree with this. I used China rather than Singapore for example because I think that it shows that even within a tightly controlled structure markets can work miracles. My main point here is that governments aren’t often ‘fast and precise’, and failing that they should get out of the way, because markets often are.
No question governments can become bloated and stupid. IMHO the solution is not TFM but rather a return to trim and efficient government. Where the market is in balance and humming along there's nothing to do -- as the French say: 'Laissez-faire'. When intervention is warranted -- and the fact is that markets can go crazy -- light, fast, precise intervention is the thing. The very model should make that explicit -- not standing armies of bureaucrats, rather commando squads -- get in, get the job done, and get out.
Again Ray, we agree. But the pendulum has swung so far the other way that when you call, as I do, for more free markets, it is interpreted as wanting anarchy.
Sure, everything becomes binary. God knows, maybe it's the plastics in everything, but centrist common sense -- the instinct towards compromise and balance -- has almost vanished. It lasted up to Clinton. Maybe it's the internet done it. Or maybe this is simply the last days of a dying civilization and it's goin' down and nothing can stop it. Dunno. Holy cow, look at that gong show over in the States.
It is simply not debatable that regulated market/capitalism is the most successful economic system that has ever existed. The valid arguments are about fine tuning.
In my mind I rifle through the bios of the great men of history, wondering which one of them to resurrect from the dead. Cincinnatus? Augustus? Lincoln? Churchill? Burke? Teddy R? Somebody? Anybody? Marcus Aurelius! There's our man.
David Miliband earns £680,000 a year from International Rescue Committee. A true socialist. I preferred it when it was run by the Tracy family. At least you could see where the strings went to.
It’s so funny you mentioned him, Jeremy. It was when he lost the Labour leadership to his brother and slouched off to head the International Rescue Organisation, at a salary of over £300,000 that I first noticed something rotten in the charity industry.
Ha ha yes. They even nicked the name. Favourite Thunderbird? I think mine was Three. Such an elegant design.
Sadly, most politicians are like Two. Sir Keir flip flops more than T2 changed pods.
Ha ha.
I always felt rather sorry for John ‘Billy No Mates’ Tracy in Thunderbird 5. I vote for a swap: John and EOS down here, for the Miliband brothers up there. Without any form of communication. At all.
Yes. He did seem like a lonely soul. Oh the Milibands. They’re like two annoying kids that think they’re helping but are just getting in the way and making things worse.
Cynical old age and hindsight suggests they were all gay or incels. No holidays, no deputies, no hanky panky. An unused swimming pool mysteriously free of carbon but no oiks to clean it. Lady Penelope looked like a go-er but surely not Parker. Just Stop Thunderbirds boats around the shore. Miliband would shut them down.
Ha ha. How depressing Zorro..
Charity in its truest sense has no intermediary; it is the direct giving of succour to one’s fellow man in distress from the kindness of one’s heart (and maybe the generosity of one’s wallet), pace the ladies with their sandwiches.
In a second order one can still consider charitable those who band together, probably locally, to promote a noble cause that could never be commercial or be deemed the necessary recipient of government largesse. Nobody is remunerated and the annual sums of money involved are a few thousand pounds at most; those involved give hours of their time to get something done. I’m the treasurer of a couple of such micro charities and while I can’t claim they occupy the same moral high ground as feeding and clothing the poor I think they still count as charitable. Whether they should get taxpayer subsidy in the form of gift aid is another question; I tend to think not.
Then we have the national “charities” with CEOs, multi million budgets, offices, DEI policies etc. These are not charities at all, in an true sense of the word, but arms of government, part of the quango state, receiving millions of pounds from the taxpayer to fund their activities and lobbying the government to do what the government intends to do anyway, lending a spurious justification for action by their apparent independence and charitable motivation. Worse still, sometimes (as Christopher Snowden often exposes) charities form sock puppet clones of themselves in order to make it appear that there is multiple demand for action. And it’s always socialist or nanny state action that’s demanded.
Thanks so much Paul. This is a perfect summary. Snowden is excellent on this stuff. The Last Orders podcast is a must-listen for me. Best of luck with your endeavours.
Any charity that spends large amounts of money on hiring expensive people to run a public reeducation campaign, rather than actually helping the objects of their charity. For example, from the RSPCA:
✚ attract the best talent and
make the RSPCA a great place
to work
✚ move to hybrid working
✚ sell our former head office at Southwater and set up new, more accessible offices, so we
can recruit talented candidates from a far wider geographical area
✚ improve our focus on equity, diversity and inclusion
✚ launch a people and culture plan offering additional support and benefits to our staff
I very much doubt that the animal rescued by the RSPCA cares very much about the skin colour of its rescuer.
Yes Jeremy. The whole industry seems to be one of Britain’s few growth areas at the moment. There have been quite a few news reports about the RSPCA morphing into an activist organisation over the last couple of years. Though in fairness, I think they got in a new boss fairly recently after acknowledging this. Just from what I remember. But your point still stands.
Many, many years ago - could even have been the last century - a friend went to work at the NSPCC. Not only did she leave the job quite quickly, but she cancelled her standing order monthly donation to the charity. It was that bad.
Hi Bettina. Yes. It seems a lot of our ‘charities’ just arent any more. Plus, so many are funded directly by government, that they have become little more than NGOs, or mini quangos. There’s not much accountability and a lot of it seems to be built around activism rather than helping people. And of course ‘awareness raising’, which is just advertising really.
Charlotte Gill is excellent on all this. Her Substack reveals a horror show of government waste in this general area.
I think like government, the big boys have become too big. It’s a difficult area to tackle because no politician wants to be labelled as someone who ‘hates charity’. Which is inevitably how any calls for reform would be spun.
Maybe this has all got to get so bad, that a wholesale reform will happen. Government just gets bigger and bigger and bigger .............and then it bursts 🙏🏻
I worry about the burst…! It never ends up how you hope. Just new bosses in charge of the same mess…
We need to make sure the new bosses are us, the people, in charge of our own communities with direct democracy in action and with taxes going upwards from local government to central government - whose only remit is to look after borders, defence and nationally recognised safety standards. We don't need Westminster to tell us what to eat and how to clean our teeth like a modern day tyrant King with a bad case of overreach!
Absolutely agree. Though they will never let us be in charge of our own lives ever again I fear.
Great piece.
Unfortunately we seem to have generated a culture where every problem is somebody else’s fault, and government’s job to fix. The answer is certainly government should “do less,” but that isn’t a vote winner.
On a separate note, after walking past a homeless guy outside Liverpool St station on my morning commute for weeks, I decided to talk to him one day. I finished up buying him a coffee most mornings until he wasn’t there one day and never came back. A surprisingly rewarding experience.
Exactly Martin. The government should do less certainly. Or at least target their (our) resources to actually helping people.
I would not be against a government programme which took money from all the DEI training for instance and put it into a task force to tackle rough sleeping. Even if it was £millions. Not by handing out soup, but by taking people off the street and putting them through a proper rehabilitation programme. But for all sorts of reasons that wont happen. And of course they would never do it properly and just end up handing out tents, like in San Francisco.
In London of course we have the additional problem of many of these ‘beggars’ being part of foreign gangs who control the most lucrative pitches. There’s a whole post to be written just on that!
I hope your friend found a better life somewhere.
That last bit - 👌🏼 nailed.
Yes, I don’t give to big charities anymore. It has all become about big business and the low morals attracts.
Help individuals directly or small community based ones. And I quite agree - smaller state, greater control over our own lives.
Hi Julie. These small charities get crowded out I think by the big players, with massive advertising budgets. Also, the ‘cuter’ your cause, the more money it can raise. So it’s not a level playing field.
So true. Many people feel pressured into taking out dds who wouldn’t normally have entertained such stuff. The hard sell is real.
Sadly true. Big State = more tax, more debt, everything worse. But Labour will most definitely not shrink the State, so it's more practical to consider how one might cope with its continued over-reach.
Re the chuggers, I found it easier to overcome my innate good manners and just blank them once I started regarding them as the duplicitous, smiley-faced robbers they really are.
Yes, it’s only going to get bigger, hungrier and more intrusive.
Yes. I won’t stop for them either. Though these young people are just another cog in the machine. Just trying to earn a few quid, not really considering the big picture. It’s just another industry I think Richard. But what they are selling passers by is a tiny slice of virtue….
> than on equally obvious factors like alcoholism, family breakdown, and most manifest of all, drug abuse.
Sure, but OTOH the wealthy have always blamed the problems of the poor on their own bad habits, no? But strangely, when even the detestable proles earn enough to put a roof over their heads, somehow their deplorable habits seem to moderate. When I was a kid a homeless person was almost unknown, let alone entire parks taken over by tents. Yes, bad habits are observed in those tent villages, but when people have absolutely no hope, they do self destructive things. And some of the people there have jobs and wish to hell they could get away from there, but with rents higher than some people's entire monthly income, the tent village is the way it is. Or sleep in your car. Easy to give up tho.
Good point. Social problems are lifestyle choices the wealthier you are. The wealthier classes don't want to restrain their own lifestyles, which has a far bigger impact the further down the economic ladder you go.
I agree Ray. I don’t see this as an OTOH issue. I’m not saying these people are always responsible for their own fate. And drugs are often the ‘rational choice’, for people at rock bottom, as is welfare dependency for many at the bottom of the social ladder.
I’m not ‘the wealthy’ nor do I dismiss these people as ‘detestable proles’. But I do think we need to acknowledge that an awful lot of these people are living from fix to fix.
I'm not throwing stones at you personally, but the attitudes I mention are 'out there'. Besides they are not entirely wrong. Funny thing, in 'Hillbilly Elegy' Vance is more critical of his people than sympathetic to them. Thing is that, as with all woke pandering the The Victims, too much coddling does The Victims more harm than good. Yes I'm sympathetic but 90% of the fix ... ooops, Freudian slip there ... is with people doing what Vance did and simply refusing to fail. But working people really do need affordable rents and living wages. Were those things available *then* I'd take a hard line on people who still choose to loose.
Yes sorry Ray. I didn’t mean to come across that way. It’s a tricky problem I think. People at the bottom of the pile are offered the choice between x and y. And then they are often pilloried for not choosing Z. We need to create a world, not through welfare, where they can take more control of their own lives. Though years of dependency would make even that an issue I think.
Sure. The dependency trap becomes an entire culture. US Black Victim gangsta culture is an example. It's at least a generation to change that even if the entire nation made it a declared priority. Ditto hillbilly culture or, so I hear, in the UK the formerly industrial areas have a similar culture of resentment, failure and despair. BTW no 'sorry' needed, you have yet to say something that might require an apology.
This was interesting talking about the drug problems in London.
Which I concur are part of the problem.
https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/high-gear-the-growth-economy
Thanks again for the incisive comment. It's always good to hear from you.
Thanks Richard. It’s a problem everywhere. And at the risk of sounding like my Mum tutting at the News-very sad. It’s a lot of quite young people with wasted potential and ruined lives.
I think a bit of tough love, but love nonetheless, is required. Though I think we’re more likely instead to copy the failed policies that have caused such havoc on the US west Coast.
Thanks for the link. I’ll have a read.
I used to run a drug education charity in London so I am aware of some of the issues. I also wrote to Tess May and Patel as home secretaries. All I got back was the same crap about being tough on crime...
Just listening to a Free Press debate on this very issue. Thanks for the above link too. I learned a lot.
Such a good article! Just read. Totally agree - like the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, he made a good case for cracking down on the bottom level of crime as the best way of tackling higher order crime because it removes the foundations. He was a fan of Rudy Giuliani's approach which cleaned up NYC 30 years ago (now declined again under the Dems):
"In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Department – at the instigation of Commissioner Bill Bratton – adopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "broken windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained" (from Wiki)
Thanks Bettina. Yes ‘Broken Windows’ is a good policy I think. The left have tried to discredit it a bit, but on any level, how can, ‘making the urban environment a better place to live for everyone’ ever be a ‘bad’ idea?
Most of these problems are solvable. And I don't think we have a massive drug problem or we'd be falling over bodies in the street. A bit like some cities in America. But if we don't deal with it now, we know what's coming.
Agreed. But I can see it going that way. I do pretty much ‘fall over bodies in the street’ every day. Well not exactly , but pretty much. These people are the epitome of ‘vulnerable’ but no one seems to want to help them. Not as attractive as some other victim groups maybe..🤔
Not now, not ever I fear.
I got an up close and personal insight into the inner workings of charities some years ago and since then I haven't contributed to any - you just don't know what they will spend the money on. My charity money goes to my church, run by priests and where I know what the money is spent on, because I see it (or sit on it - heated seating in an unheated church!).
There is a tipping point in any organisation, beyond which the org becomes self-serving and generates activities to sustain its own existence. It usually loses sight of its purpose at that same time and the decline sets in. Government and "non-governmental" government organisations long since passed that point. Regulations now exist to provide work for the Regulators. Then only way these end is (a) revolution - societal or technological or (b) everyone ignores them, starving them of attention or money. I do wonder where we are headed now.
Thanks Pilgrim. A few comments saying broadly the same thing. I used to give to these charities. Then I saw how they worked. Now I don’t give to them.
There’s probably a broad scandal here if anyone serious wanted to investigate. Of course literally no one does.
I did read one book a few years ago called The Great Charity Scandal by David Craig. Which was illuminating. But it was quite a niche publication I think.
You are definitely right about the ongoing corruption of the big charities. They seem to have completely forgotten their actual task.
There’s a ‘but’ this time though. I’m less convinced by the free market these days. With Railway’s, Energy Companies, the water companies and the FANGs as the example, I think it is more klepto-capitalism.
That’s fair P. But I often find, when you dig a bit deeper these ‘privatised’ utilities aren’t really privatised at all. That’s certainly true of the railways. Much of which is still government own or subject to a huge amount of regulation. I don’t know about water. But a good example is the housing ‘market’ which has the government, at least indirectly, being in charge of both supply (through planning regs) and demand (through interest rates and mortgage rules and wider economic factors like money printing etc).
But yes. It is klepto-capitalism. Though of course the left, not 100% unfairly, might say no, that’s just capitalism.
I would definitely vote for the Old Ladies with Sandwiches Party.
It would factionalise. With different factions demanding different fillings. 🤣
Maybe I've missed something, but was there a turning point or regulatory change which opened the door to charity-as industry?
Maybe when the coalition got in in 2010, with all the Big Society spiel?
Interesting. I wonder when that was. Maybe under Blair? (Not saying he’s the bogeyman, just seems quite a New Labour change.)
The Big Society as in idea wasn’t so bad in it’s pure essence I think. Of course Cameron didn’t sell it as an idea very well. A posh boy telling us all to pull together in little groups, like a House at Eton, was never going to wash.
Nailed it: Big Society. Some bright Tory SPAD (oxymoron?) worked out Government could hand money to charities and they could deliver public services cheaper, as there was no need to employ Civil Servants, maintain buildings etc. Austerity by outsourcing. Except, the savings never came and the Government money created a second huge bureaucracy in the charity sector. As an added bonus, every fifteen seconds the Government gets sued, with our money, by charities that object to Government Policies, defending itself with our money. Then losing and paying damages; with our money. Genius.
Yes Dan. This ‘outsourcing’ is often just doubling up. And of course there’s all the added regulation too. An excellent comment. Thank you.
Our will be a challenge to get that toothpaste back in the tube :\
Quite agree
What's also NEVER allowed to be said, even in a world where "behavioural economics" rules supreme over "actual economics" of the Adam Smith variety.
There's a huge behavioural impact of (1) corporate charities and (2) colossal taxation which isn't, as you say, pitched at property rights, law and order and public services. Anyone earning more than the median is harangued for "not paying their fair share" and further harangued if they do....but it's always about taxes. The message blaring out is: paying your taxes is what you do to help those less fortunate. The message being received is: if only you got on board with paying even more taxes, you wouldn't need to worry about those less fortunate.
A excellent point, brilliantly put Mr Chips.
Yes. People now see the government as the ultimate ‘problem solver’ in their lives, rather than themselves. They’re not thick or lazy for taking this attitude. As you say, they have been told this is how it should work, and that message is reinforced at every level.
Rings a bell about the conflict between 'The Broken Windows Theory' and the 'Parable of the broken window.' Frederic Bastiat 1850.
One, that if a broken window is left unrepaired, the others will be smashed too, i.e. disorder breeds disorder, society breaks down. The other, that, if a window gets broken then the repair benefits the local glazier. i.e. false growth, running to stand still. The effort best made elsewhere, adding to society. In both cases.
Leading to 'give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish...' etc etc.
In LSO's stated case the Charity, and chuggers' efforts, should be put to better use rather than support an ever increasing dependent community. Cyclical self justification. Neither can exist without the other. Even the benevolent free sandwich givers are as guilty of supporting dependency.
Not easy, I'm not proposing the Work House of Dicken's days. The Big Issue tried but failed leaving us with sleeping bag/dog/high st people with self employed status. Self esteem is not a tradeable commodity when folk just take the mickey.
There are houses to be built, pot holes to be mended and if we're not careful, wars to be fought. Perhaps we should stop rewarding the feckless. More stick, less carrot. Buck up or you'll get a uniform but who'd enforce it?
Slightly flippant, but does anyone read those very dull charity newsletters for regular contributors? They are so universally bland that I wonder if tedium pays somehow - in a similar but quite different way to the attractive energy of the chuggers described.
Not sure about those Ross. But I regularly get a ‘magazine’ from Camden council, I shudder at the cost of sending it to every home/dumping it in every hedge, in Camden. I which CC praises itself for how diverse and amazing it is.
If you only have a hammer (as have Governments), every problem is a nail.
> So maybe it can deliver a teeny tiny amount of growth after all.
Ideologues who want to 'own' the Chinese miracle should remember that whereas the CPP did indeed open up the economy to Market Forces the entire thing was carefully planned many decades into the future and closely regulated at all times. It seems to me that the Chinese are an advertisement for what an all-powerful but yet prudent government can achieve. This was nothing at all like what our TFM (The Free Market) fundamentalists preach. What I learn from the Chinese is that government interventions can be quite useful, but they should be fast and precise not slow and bureaucratic.
Yes Ray. I agree with this. I used China rather than Singapore for example because I think that it shows that even within a tightly controlled structure markets can work miracles. My main point here is that governments aren’t often ‘fast and precise’, and failing that they should get out of the way, because markets often are.
No question governments can become bloated and stupid. IMHO the solution is not TFM but rather a return to trim and efficient government. Where the market is in balance and humming along there's nothing to do -- as the French say: 'Laissez-faire'. When intervention is warranted -- and the fact is that markets can go crazy -- light, fast, precise intervention is the thing. The very model should make that explicit -- not standing armies of bureaucrats, rather commando squads -- get in, get the job done, and get out.
Again Ray, we agree. But the pendulum has swung so far the other way that when you call, as I do, for more free markets, it is interpreted as wanting anarchy.
Sure, everything becomes binary. God knows, maybe it's the plastics in everything, but centrist common sense -- the instinct towards compromise and balance -- has almost vanished. It lasted up to Clinton. Maybe it's the internet done it. Or maybe this is simply the last days of a dying civilization and it's goin' down and nothing can stop it. Dunno. Holy cow, look at that gong show over in the States.
It is simply not debatable that regulated market/capitalism is the most successful economic system that has ever existed. The valid arguments are about fine tuning.
Exactly.
And now the right is fighting itself over ‘woke cancel culture’. We’re just battling among ourselves and achieving nothing.
In my mind I rifle through the bios of the great men of history, wondering which one of them to resurrect from the dead. Cincinnatus? Augustus? Lincoln? Churchill? Burke? Teddy R? Somebody? Anybody? Marcus Aurelius! There's our man.