When does charity become a business

Haya, Pete.  Of course, I like you.  You know very well I welcome your thoughts and I enjoy publishing your comments.  I love hearing what you have to say about Science or Conscience on donating. Thank you.

You are not going to like me. I do not give money to charity, except on Poppy Day which we buy artificial poppies and the money goes to the armed forces and children’s charities.

I can hear people now saying “What about the starving people in Africa?” I say what about the starving, homeless and orphaned children in the UK, one of the richest countries in the world and 85,000 children were homeless on Christmas day.

I was stopped in the street by a very pretty girl who were collecting for a African charity and wanted me to sign up for monthly payments to the charity, I refused and said to her, but it’s nice you can give your time to stand on the street and do  this, she told me that she gets paid for doing this. There goes one of the reasons why I don’t give to African charities; I like to see where my money goes. For example if I agree to give £10 to her charity at least £1 will go on her wages, then £2 will go on admin, the Day-Glo jackets she was wearing with the charities name on, then £4 will go on the staff who do the admin, then another £1 will go to the War Lord who runs the protection who allows the charity ‘safe passage’ and will spend that money on guns which was one of the reason that caused the problem in the first place.

Charity shops are as bad, I was in the Heart Foundation charity shop just before Christmas, I do go in looking for a bargain and yes it gives to charity but it’s a ‘at home’ charity. Anyway my wife picked up a jersey and the price tag was £4.50, to buy that same jersey new from the clothes shop ‘George’ would cost £4.00 brand new……. I told the woman who worked the till and her reply was ‘Sir, it’s for charity’

These organisations get these items for FREE; they pay no tax, no rent, very little, no business rates, and have volunteered staff and people sent from the unemployed benefit office they still think that they can sell pre worn clothes more than the new price.

This is not the first time or charity doing this, a DVD selling in Asda/Walmart for £3 the charity shop £3.20. If they sold the free goods at a lower price they will sell more. In the town of Arbroath there are 7 charity shops in one high street, that’s a lot of old clothes. Some even break copyright laws by selling illegally copied DVDs and music cd’s, they say ‘oh we didn’t see it’ when it was pointed out.

So charity shops are and the charities they are supposed to represent are just trying to rip people off with lines like ‘We are saving lives of children’ ‘You could save a village from drinking dirty water’ ‘Our struggle to save the eye sight of hundreds of people in this one village’

In one of British charities employed a retired chief inspector police officer who would already been put on a huge police pension, his pay as CEO of this charity £70,000+ expenses.

I say no more.  It’s no longer charity, its multi million pound business.

Google ‘Head of British Charity pay’ or
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10224104/30-charity-chiefs-paid-more-than-100000.html