Tuesday, 17 March 2009

In Passing

We need somebody doing this...


S.Weasel
:

The peppery proprietor of Devil’s Kitchen has started to poke around the British world of fake charities, with a site called…ummm…Fake Charities.

Turns out, many of these organizations get, like, 1% of their money from real people donations.  The other 99% comes from government — either the British government or the European Union.  These are groups lobbying for things like higher booze prices or lower speed limits or restrictions on the internet.  Paid for with our money...

So. Government wants a law, government funds “charity,” charity recommends law.  Plus, many useless lefties with junk degrees get sweet jobs.  Bonus!
The entries for some organizations are quite interesting.  For example, consider Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food & Farming:
The charity is a modern-day “back to the land” charity that campaigns for people to consume less meat and milk in favour of more organic food and vegetables.  It opposes intensive farming, wants a ban on “junk food” advertising and claims that eating the “wrong” food causes mental illness.

According to its 2007 accounts, Sustain was given the following grants:
  • £120,289 from DEFRA
  • £55,100 from the Department of Health
  • £46,470 from the European Regional Development Fund
  • £17,000 from the Food Standards Agency
  • £13,739 from the London Sustainabilty Exchange
  • £12,000 from the Government Office of London
  • £7,000 from the Government Office of the South West
  • A further £99,581 comes from “other grants and income.”
This revenue amounts to more than half of the charity’s total income.  There is no record of any voluntary donations from the public.

Similar shenanigans occasionally come to light on this side of the pond,[1] but I’m not aware of any one-stop resource for tracking the “independent” groups involved.  Such a site would be most handy in vetting the objectivity of the source the next time some rewritten press release gets big play in the MSM.

Related:

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[1]  Besides lobbying the government to take away our liberty, many of these groups produce those mother-knows-best “public service announcements” that hector you to “do this” or “don’t do that” on local radio and television.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:32:09 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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