Must have been about 30 years ago. I took a call at work asking me to sponsor something for sick kids or contribute for ailing single-parents or donate to malnourished Africans or something. And I agreed. Sounded good. The charity had a good sounding name and this was not an uncommon occurrence. They said they’d send someone round to pick up the cheque the very next day. But before they arrived I had another call. From a journalist. Who’d just visited the charity’s office and happened to see the name of my company on the list there and called me. “Don’t give them a penny”, she said. “They’re dodgy, a sham, fraudulent, shitty, bottom-feeding, heartstring-plucking con-artists”. Ok.

The journo had in fact been investigating that very charity for her paper because although they were registered and seemingly kosher and everything a charity needs to be, only about 2% of the money raised ever found its way to the bisexual monoped beneficiaries or whoever they were. The other 98% was lost in ‘running the charity’. 6-figure salaries for the directors, a new Porsche every year, ‘business trips’, all expenses paid, to Barbados, Gstaad, Las Vegas.

And since then I’m the most totally cynical person about charities. All of them. Don’t trust them as far as I could fucking throw them. The original ‘Live Aid’ was the biggest success story ever. Bob Geldof raised millions to ‘feed the world’. But not one penny of it ever arrived. No-one, to this day, can work out where it went. Certainly didn’t get spent buying Bob a new wardrobe, scruffy git.

The problem is that I want to be charitable. Its one of the founding principles of the Jews, as it is with Muslims too. And although I’m about as observant a Jew as the Pope, some things, like charity and chopped liver are way deeper than mere praying to God knows who (I should rephrase that but I like it).

They’ve changed the rules now so charities have to be more ‘transparent’ but the CEOs of big organisations will earn big, or they wouldn’t move to the charity sector which needs their expertise. You can’t expect people to work for nothing. But I want to know when the focus on any ‘charity’ has moved from ‘them’ (the needy, the poor, the headline cause) to ‘us’ (those running it). And that is impossible to know.

And I hate Amnesty International and I hate Oxfam because both are overly politicised and blatantly anti-Israel (yes, you CAN be anti-Israel and NOT anti-semitic, but both those charities fail that difference test by any criterion you choose).

And now we learn that bosses at Oxfam are spending OUR money (from our taxes) and your money pledged on the street or in direct debits, on hookers and pornography. Which sounds morally worse than if it was on cars and beer, but its not. Its ‘your’ pleasure with ‘our’ money, whatever that money goes to.

And this is the problem with David Cameron’s wonderful gesture of giving away a massive slice of UK income to ‘overseas aid’. When you can bet at least 7/8ths of it never gets to feed the starving. Unless they’re using hungry hookers.

Give generously.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx