There was a time when I would be glued to the TV when one of those telethons took place. We’ve had a few over the years, but mainly Children In Need and Comic Relief. I’ve long lost interest in the shows, if not the terrible plight the world is in. And I’ve particularly lost interest in super wealthy ‘stars’ imploring me to pledge ten pounds to help a starving child in Africa and a disabled child in the UK. I’m not against charities per se because my lost two jobs were with charities and I currently carry out voluntary work for a charity, too, as well as making weekly donations to a charity of our choice. But as I always remind myself, charity exists to pay for things the taxpayer feels are not worth paying for collectively through charity. You know the sort of things: people starving, hospice care for children and cancer research. As soon as the titles came up for tonight’s Comic Relief, I turned off the telly.
I suspect I am not the only one with compassion fatigue, at least when it comes to telethons. When in Sainsbury’s the other day, I overheard a woman asking a member of staff where all the Comic Relief merch was, especially the red noses. The answer was simple: last year Sainsbury’s were left with a large number of red noses, T shirts and all the rest of it and decided this year to give it a miss. Or, to put it another way, they lost too much money. Tonight, as an alternative to Comic Relief, I’m watching a programme on Amazon Prime showing diesel-hauled trains going through Lincoln.
I don’t know if the compassion fatigue I sense means that people are sick of giving to charity. Maybe it’s that they prefer make their own minds up as to which charity to support. As I’ve mentioned far too much on this blog, my charity of choice is food banks. I know what it’s like to not have very much, although I never went hungry, and something has stirred inside me that I want to help. Other people in my family and friendship circle support other charities. Some of the reasons are personal, where they’ve lost a friend to cancer or lost a family member to dementia, which is an extended loss before death. These are powerful motives. And if society doesn’t care as a whole, then someone has to.
Naively, I used to think that charities were a bad thing and if we all collectively stopped giving, the government would have to step in. But over and over again, I have been proved wrong. A simple example is with food banks. As a direct result of policies followed by all governments since 2010, increasing numbers of people were unable to feed themselves. Government did not step in and decent people felt obliged to fill the gap. Other charities exist for much the same reason. Indeed, that’s how Children In Need and Comic Relief started up in the first place.
Some charities are better than others. My first experience of working for one was the British Red Cross, which turned out to be more of an international business than a charity, phenomenally wealthy but secretive about its funding, with vast numbers of highly paid staff and the second, Headway, a much smaller charity for people with brain injuries which operates more like a small business than a charity. Knowing what I know about them, I wouldn’t donate a penny to either but I am happy there are thousands of worthy charities who do a great job. It’s up to all of us to do our research and support the ones that are right for us.
At least with Comic Relief and Children In Need, all the money raised goes directly to the people who need it, something you could definitely not say about the ones I worked for, so it’s fine to give money to them. I just don’t need to have the likes of Zoe Ball and Paddy McGuinness to tell me what to do with my money, which will always be a tiny fraction of what they’ve got in the piggy bank. Anyway, it’s time to get back to those diesels.
