Put your hands together, ladies and gentlemen, for George Osborne and HM Treasury who are tomorrow celebrating Children in Need. You might be forgiven for thinking that the Chancer of the Exchequer was nothing more than a slimy, smug multimillionaire who has no interest nor understanding of the lives of ordinary people – and you’d be right – but come on, let’s give the man a break. He’s helping Children in Need, isn’t he? Hmm, maybe not.
Since Osborne took over in Number 11 Downing Street, the number of children in need has soared dramatically and with his latest attack on working tax credits, he is doing his level best to ensure there will be many more. Labour left government in 2010 with a disgraceful 70,000 homeless children; Osborne has managed to increase that to 100,000 children. There are 200,000 more children in absolute poverty since 2010 and the number of children’s Sure Start centres have been cut from 3632 to 2677 today.
None of this is of any concern to Osborne who is a very rich man – currently worth over £4m and one day will inherit the family business (and a knighthood) – and sends his own children to St Pauls School at a cost of some £14,000 a term for both of them. Just to put this into context, the combined term fees for his children work out more than the annual salary of someone working full time on the national minimum wage.
This is another aspect to Children in Need that is giving me the creeps. I always believed the charity to be one of the finest in the land and in many ways I still do. The annual show reminds us how difficult the lives of so many children have become and ordinary people, often very poor people, donate generously to help them. It brings out the best in them. No one wants to see children suffer, or do they?
Osborne’s faux sympathy for disadvantaged children is exposed by his actual deeds in politics. He wants to support Children in Need at the same time as creating additional children in need.
And then there is the actual show itself, this Friday night, which brings out both the best and the worst in rich celebrities. The best because they give up their time to raise money, the worst when they are then exposed for tax dodging, isn’t that right, Gary/Howard/Mark? And, and we have discussed before, Chris Evans.
Evans is the most talented presenter of his generation and he is probably the wealthiest too. I never begrudge anyone for working hard and becoming wealthy, provided that they then pay their taxes and don’t rub our noses in it. There is no evidence that Evans doesn’t do the former, but plenty that he does the latter. As usual, Evans is raising huge sums of money by auctioning certain items, days out, that sort of thing. The sums people are bidding are in the tens of thousands, sometimes they are in six figures. Evans and his co-hosts are gushing wildly at the so called generosity of those bidding, but hang on: who are they? They’re from the Osborne class, the rich and not always famous, who can afford to hand the ginger one a huge wad in order to have a slap up weekend at Monaco. The signal this is all sending is unmistakable: some people’s money is better than others’. Of course, Evans will be congratulating the kids who raise £50 by some imaginative fund-raising but the ones who seem to matter most are the well off. So, who’s money is better, then?
The seriously wealthy surely do it because a) they can more than afford to and b) because they will enjoy something which will be all but unattainable to ordinary folk. Perhaps I am being harsh and all these people want to do is help disadvantaged children, but then, they could always do that anyway.
I fear we are moving to an American-style situation where charities, often heavily supported by the rich, provide vital frontline services that ordinary working people would otherwise be denied. Children in Need, if it carries on like this, will do George Osborne’s job with the money Chris Evans can squeeze from the fattest fat cats. If this is the future of Children in Need, I’ll give my money to the NSPCC, the Red Cross or all manner of wonderful charities whose efforts depend on the generosity of society in general and value all contributions equally.
