Caffè sospeso

I came across this idea via @SturdyAlex on twitter:

A tradition in the cafés of Naples is to order a caffè sospeso – literally, a coffee "in suspense" (aka. caffè pagato, or "paid coffee") – as a sign of your good fortune. When a sospeso is ordered, the customer pays for two coffees, but only receives one. That way, when a person who is homeless or otherwise down on their luck walks into the café, the person can ask if there are any coffees held in suspense, and can have one as a courtesy of the first customer. Though the custom has been a part of Neapolitan society for many years, it is somewhat less common today.

I think this is a wonderful idea as someone who can't get by without coffee and a great way to give someone who needs it, a lift. Can we introduce this in the UK?

A thought on charity

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Barbara Hitler (or something)

Oh dear. The clitterati are up in arms because some charity bint is trying to get druggies to get sterilised to stop having kids that they can't take care of.

I had several nearly identical discussions on twitter with people who were all clearly of the opinion that drug addicts were worthless imbeciles who couldn't be trusted to find their own arseholes with both hands because they were so drug-addled. But at some point, they might turn round and become solid, upstanding fellow-statists who would raise more unquestioning cattle to feed the state, so their balls and ovaries deserved protection.

Now, I think that Barbara Harris's Project Prevention is a pretty disgusting thing. It's judgemental and has some very nasty undertones. But the fact of the matter is that this is all an entirely voluntary transaction. The addict gets some money in exchange for submitting to a (probably reversible) surgical procedure. At no point is anyone threatening the druggie with jail time.

I think it sounds like a patronising, demeaning, almost nasty deal. I wouldn't want to undergo it it. But crucially, I don't think it's my place to tell druggies how to live their lives, nor do I think it's any of my business to tell Barbara Harris how to spend her privately-raised charity money that other people have given freely knowing what the charity's objectives were, nor do I think I have all the answers for other people.

It is, in a sense, like defending neo-nazis' right to talk loads of bullshit. I don't agree with it, but it's their right to say things other people don't like, just like it's my right to call people cunts.

It's people's right to enter into voluntary transactions that they believe are mutually beneficial. And it's nobody else's business but those of the people transacting.

A useful bit of charity

Listen to this:

My mum had a leukaemia relapse. We asked about a bone marrow transplant on 15 April and agreement to fund the cost of a transplant was given to us a week later. Within a month she'd had the transplant.

Sounds good, doesn't it? There's only one problem. The whole story reads like this:

My mum had a leukaemia relapse. Her consultant said that within a year she would be dead, thanks to her PCT's decision not to fund a bone marrow transplant. We appealed, but the PCT denied the appeal, despite the fact that many other PCT's fund bone marrow transfers.

We asked [a charity that I know a member of] about a bone marrow transplant on 15 April and agreement to fund the cost of a transplant was given to us a week later. Within a month she'd had the transplant.

This is not a very well-known charity. They don't advertise on TV, they don't accept money from the government and they don't have famous people advocating them or brightly coloured bangles that you can buy. It is, as far as I can tell, exactly what a charity should be: it takes voluntary donations from people, has real people who listen to requests and decide the merits of each case very quickly. They don't "chug", they don't even have volunteers shaking collecting cans outside supermarkets.

And they can do a better job in individual cases than the NHS, as could many other charities of the same kind. If people weren't funding the NHS, these charities could get some of that wasted money and use it to provide targeted care to people who needed it.

Because even with the billions of pounds that the government throws uncaringly at the NHS, the NHS is in too many cases not delivering what is needed by the people who need health care.

Is everyone's favourite "charity" softening the ground?

Cunts:

Andrew Flanagan, who was appointed chief executive of the charity in January, said public perceptions of poor quality residential and foster care may be to blame and the issue needed to be addressed.

Asked whether too many children at risk of harm were being left with their families, Mr Flanagan said: "If a child dies, we have to say, 'Yes, they are'. The cut-off point is wrong. "

He added: "There is a long-standing view that publicly-provided care is not as good as care in the home. There is a presupposition that leaving a child in the home must be better. We need to open up that debate.

"Why is care not a good option? If it isn't, that is the thing that needs to be addressed."

Come on, you fucking fuck knuckle: are you seriously suggesting that on average, or indeed, in all but the most egregious cases, a care home is not a worse option than being raised by your parents? There isn't a fucking debate to be had here, you clueless fucking moron.

Who is next, Pudsey?

Via the Kitchen, I see that Comic Relief is chucking money at Fake Charities:

In 2004, Comic Relief funded Alcohol Concern and London Drug and Alcohol Network to produce an online toolkit that would help local alcohol leads develop and implement cross cutting local alcohol strategies.

This means that people giving money to Comic Relief are actually then handing the money over to an organisation that helps promote whatever fatuity the state is promoting this week.

And I'm sure that a bit of investigation will find more and more of this egregious theft out of the limited resources of the well-meaning.

Charity begins at home: look after your own, look after your family, look after your neighbours, look after your town. Most "charities" are now nothing more than government co-opted pecksniffs who want to tell you have to live every aspect of your life.

FUCK THEM ALL.

A very bad idea

Dear me, here we go again. It's true, poverty in Africa is shocking. All this wibble about "children in poverty" in the UK is absolutely fatuous when you look at genuine, breathtaking absolute poverty.

Really poor people, earlier

But there is no quick fix to poverty. Chucking huge amounts of money, even directly at the poor, does nothing permanent. Chucking huge amounts of money at charities just makes the charities even more jumped up and pompous than they were before. Before you give any money to Breadline, check what they spend their money on. You may find that they are spending money on things that, while worthy, will do sweet fuck-all to help the poor. Breadline could also easily be skimming money off the top and might be distributing the money in a way which might not actually help people very effectively.

It's better if you go and have a look at the projects they support, and give the money directly to them. But don't take them at face value, either. They could be shysters hiding under sweet and honeyed words, too.

And really, the best thing you can do is to employ somebody. And if the minimum wage makes them too expensive to employ, what does that tell you? It tells you their labour isn't worth the minimum wage. So the government should abolish the minimum wage. Getting a shit job for a low wage is the first step to getting a better job on a higher wage.

Getting out of poverty is bloody hard work. Handouts don't do it. High ideals don't do it. Governments can't legislate people out of real poverty. Minimum wages keep people out of work.

Charity sucks donkey cock, no matter if it makes you feel better about yourself for five minutes.

Sweet Charideeeee

I don't like charities. Well, I don't like big charities.

In my distant youth, I consulted to a charity in Africa on technology. It was filled with genuinely kind, well-meaning, nice people. I also had the pleasure of working alongside a guy who had been incarcerated at Robben Island for even longer than Nelson Mandela. He was such a nice, gentle guy, I really couldn't understand what had inspired him to go round planting bombs and killing people.

I digress.

This was a small charity, that struggled for funding. They did something useful, namely micro-lending. They funded small groups of people with seed capital and relied on group peer pressure to keep the repayments up. It worked pretty well, they got lots of people going and they made a lot of difference to a lot of people.

But there are some other, larger charities out there, and I can't help but wonder about their motives and their drivers. I mean, how the hell can the NSPCC afford to saturate television channels with adverts asking for £3 a month? Why the hell are chuggers fucking paid commission on the money they soak out of passersby? Why do some charities make a big fuss about not getting government funding, like the RSPCA? (I know, it's to soak more money out of you and me!) And what the fuck is the government doing, dishing out money to charities?

Well, it turns out that what the government is doing, is this:

We've often blogged how many supposed "charities" are so dependent on state funding they are in reality little more than quangos (see previous blogs, eg here and here).

According to the Charities Commission, around two-thirds of the larger charities now get 80% or more of their income from government (eg Barnardos is 78% state funded - and now run by an ex-civil servant to boot - with NCH and Leonard Cheshire both on 88%).

Fucking hellski, if I might borrow a phrase from some other cunt.

So, the government is taking MY MONEY and using it to fund things I might not give a rat's arse about, is it? Like, oh, I don't know:

[persuading] the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to protect the rare Jerdon’s courser, a project that includes the diversion of a major canal. Ian Barber, the RSPB’s Asia Officer, says:

"It is crucial we find other sites hosting Jerdon’s coursers and encourage both politicians and the people living nearby to support that work."

No problem at all with the RSPB doing that, but is it really "crucial" in the sense of being something we want our taxes spent on? And should British taxpayers ever be in the business of political campaigning inside another sovereign country? How would we react if the situations were reversed?

It turns out the RSPB has a raft of overseas projects, from acquiring the concession licence for 53,000 ha of Sumatran rainforest, to managing aquatic warbler habitat in Poland

What the FUCK? Using £20 million of my tax money, without even fucking telling me?

You cheeky fuckers! How many schoolzanospitals would that be then?

And what about all the highly-paid staff, riding on the back of volunteers' efforts and private donors, just so that they can suckle at the teat of the government for the real money?

But the real shocker comes when you delve into that Charities Commission report:

Charities are set up to pursue worthy objectives, which are most unlikely to square with those of our elected politicos. But once they take the Queen's shilling, they have to play the politicos' tune. The Charity Commission survey found that three-quarters of those doing so are put under pressure to do what the politicos want

In other words, more unaccountable fuckknuckles sticking their beaks into our business, fucking us around and wasting our money.

Don't fall for the chuggers' bullshit, folks. If you're going to chuck money at a charity, make fucking sure you know where it's going, because most of these cunts are just extensions of the political class that is fucking this country into a cocked hat.

Vote Libertarian and make charities back into charities.

Update: As if by magic:

Shelter, one of the few organisations backing the plan to build new towns in the English countryside, said it had been given £100,000 by the Government to publish a series of 13 pamphlets, one for each proposed eco-town site.

Called "Eco-town – the facts", the publications are branded with the Shelter logo and claim to assess the impact the new homes will have in the different areas. Each one begins: "Shelter has written a series of leaflets to help clarify the facts."

But each 20-page leaflet focuses largely on the need for more affordable housing, with only one paragraph addressing such concerns as traffic levels, flood risks and pressure on public serices.

Opponents called the leaflets "Government propaganda" and accused ministers of trying to mislead the public into thinking the information came from an independent source.

Ya think?!

Update 2: Here is an example of someone doing what they want to do with their own money:

A British woman has paid 1.5 million pounds in a charity auction to fly with the Royal Air Force's aerobatic Red Arrows display jets, the Help for Heroes charity said on Monday.

"We are speechless," the RAF said in a statement after Heselden's bid at the Heroes' Ball on Friday, a fundraiser for the HFH charity which provides support for servicemen and women injured in the line of duty.

"We know it is a special prize -- a once in a lifetime opportunity -- but we are all astounded that someone could be so generous," the RAF said.

Funny, though. I'd have thought that the government would be taking care of those they send to die on foreign shores, rather than them having to rely on the kindness of strangers. I can't see why Jerdon's coursers would take priority.