Who Said We Aren't Compassionate

[emmie]

Children in Need tops overall 1 Billion, that's incredible.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46239463

[SparklyKid]

The Royal British Legion is very interesting. Listened to a R4 prog the other day, most enlightening. It seems they have millions of pounds, they do very good work. Worth a research.

[SparklyKid]

https://media.britishlegion.org.uk/Media/9244/the-royal-british-legion-annual-report-accounts-2016.pdf



Bit of a heavy read,lol.

[emmie]

they do good work overall, supporting service personnel and their families and loads more besides.

[Mamyalynne]

Sometimes we (I) need reminding of how things can change in an instant - I became an Aunt (again) a month ago.

Little sweetheart has been in hospital two weeks with a bad virus and encephalitis - seeing those little ones on television who have life long problems after similar happenings makes it all the more real.

We are all one tiny step away from needing support of some kind.

[emmie]

mamy
lets hope that the mite won't be in too long, i am sure she will get the best treatment possible.

[Mamyalynne]

She's being well cared for, thank you.x

[hc4361]

£130k is not a huge salary for a chief executive. The chief executive of my local, smallish council earns £170k.

The CEO of M&S earns £810k plus bonuses and benefits.

[emmie]

we are talking of leading charities here, not corporations, and many councils have too many executives with over inflated salaries.

[Buenchico]

£130k is only about the same as the headteacher of a large comprehensive school gets, so it's a very small amount for the head of a major organisation like Children in Need. The chief executive could probably get ten times that in industry.

[hc4361]

Exactly so, Buenchico.

[KARL]

I was shorn of knee-jerk-like repect as soon as charitable organisations are mentioned some decades ago when I was working in Sudan. At the time the only place recognisable as a café in the western sense was the one in the Hilton hotel in Khartoum. Every afternoon around 15.00 several white Land Cruisers, conspicuously among the very flashiest vehicles anywhere in the country, rolled up outside and out stepped various westerners (vast majority Brits) with walkie-talkies on their hips and swaggered into the café. When home on leave at one point I switched on the TV news: On there was one of these charity people describing how desperate the state was in Sudan due to flooding of the Nile, much more donations of money were needed in order to avert a catastrophe.

My work took me to both Niles (White and Blue) and I was unaware of water levels being particularly high. I concluded that the disparity pointed to something being missing in the equation and that it was the job security of the café-goers. As with religion (forming a "church" in Africa is one of the surest routes to financial security there), charity is now a form of business, even industry, complete with professions, salaries, managers/management, etc. I am very careful indeed on how I give money to any "charitable effort".

Separately, although the two no doubt sometimes occur simultaneously, I would never equate the bottom line of a collection campaign, which may be said to be public generosity with money, with compassion which is a state of emotion.

[emmie]

anyway this is about the amount of money raised and i for one applaud the people for digging deep and making a big difference to children's lives.

[Old_Geezer]

Makes one wonder why there are children in need. Is the sytem failing ? Then fix it.

[Old_Geezer]

"£130k is not a huge salary for a chief executive. The chief executive of my local, smallish council earns £170k. The CEO of M&S earns £810k plus bonuses and benefits."

Just goes to show what an inequitable society we live in. Many citizens work very hard and can't imagine being so overpaid.

[ummmm]

It's not children in need in that sense, OG. They help provide respite care, provide centres for children with disabilities, bereavement councillors for youngster struggling with grief...that kind of thing

[Old_Geezer]

Still sounds like a system failure to me. But I guess one could consider all/most charities existence the same way.

[hc4361]

OG, if our highly paid, highly skilled bosses had their pay curtailed they'd simply go and work abroad and the UK would be worse off for it.

[Mamyalynne]

You need to see some of the projects to understand that often the type of need/care is outside what the 'system' can give.

These children need time, patience,understanding,play as much as anything else - Parents need time to do things in their daily life while their sick or dying children are in good company.

The remit is very broad and of course we won't all agree that all of the money is spent on what we'd like but overall I think they help a lot of deserving cases.

Yes Karl, compassion is often based on emotion, personal sometimes - without that we'd be made of stone.

[emmie]

Going on Children in Need on tv last evening, they do good works all round.

[Old_Geezer]

That's an old excuse. If our highly paid, and claiming to be highly skilled, bosses had their pay curtailed they'd simply go and try to find work abroad, and the UK would find others equally talented willing to work for a reasonable amount and would be a fairer society for it. Whilst those that left find themselves competing for overpaid positions in places where incumbant overpaids are already established in their old boys' network.