done lad. good luck

PQ

I have issues with charities & even greater issues with bands who associate themselves with charities in a effort to raise their profiles. Also, there is no Monday (12th) in 2008.

come on then starbelgrade... impart your wisdom once again...

Charities exist purely because society fails to deal with it's own problems in a truly human way. If we were truly altruistic, looking after the sick, the needy, the poor, would be an obligation, not something that we can take or leave. By treating the "charitable" as such, it only serves to re-enforce the two tier system that already exists. Why should cancer patients rely on what we give them out of our pockets? Why should the poor only benefit from the crumbs off our tables? Surely every human should be given the same opportunities and benefits, especially in societies as rich as our western ones?

By creating charities, we are removing the responsibility of caring for those who cannot care efor themselves away from the people who should be obliged to look after them.. ie., us. But it seems too difficult a problem to address - it's easier to pledge a few quid here & there or throw a few pence into a box.. it asuages our guilt.

Even though charities have existed for a long time, they are still a short term solution to long term problems.

As for bands riding on the back of charities - well, that stinks of self promotion to me.. especially when they (like the one above) are more interested in getting people's attention in order to get on the bill than they are in promoting the charity itself.

an rebels abu

Eh?

up the rebels

lol. Yeah - it's not a popular opinion... people look at me like I've two heads when I say this, but it's something I strongly believe in & have been active in a political sense on the subject for a few years now. The problem with people's attitudes is that charities have become so much part of the institution, that for the most, people not only fail to see the need to question them but are completely unwilling to enter the debate with any amount of open mindedness... it's almost as if my viewpoint comes from the right wing, when it is in fact more socialist than many so-called socialists.

There is a school of thought, from the right, which also believes that charities do not work, but this is based more on the business model & centres mainly on the idea that they are inherently inneficient & that by creating charity, you create a culture of dependence & an expetancy for hand-outs, which in turn cultures laziness. And while I agree to a certain point with this, it's not from this angle that I base any of my discussions.

Take a day off mate....the lads just want a gig!!

It's laziness of attitudes that allow situations like this to continue. If the lads want a gig, there a so many different ways of doing so.. If they want to get in touch, I can put them in touch with a lot of promoters and venue owners around the country.

Thanks to everyone who voted, we got through to the final 4, a panel of judges will pick the winner in a few weeks time (www.xfmmanchester.co.uk for details) As for our motives for getting involved with it, two points. We were entered into the competition by XFm without knowing. They pick artists to go through to monthly competitions, we didn't know they were involved with Versus Cancer. We decided we might as well make an effort to get through and we're not apologising for it. We moved over here to try to make it as a band and we're going to take every opportunity that comes our way. Secondly, one of us had a hefty dose of testicular about three years ago and we all witnessed it first hand. So it's not (totally) shameless self promotion! And i think it's a bit low critisizing charitable organisations Starbelgrade, there's a lot of other places you could start. Well done on the big words though.

keep us updated chap

PQ

There is nothing LOW about questioning anything.. if you read what I said & digested it instead of skimming, you'd see that I have a very valid point... being that charities should have no need to exist. The fact that they DO exist, means that we, as a society are failing - so, I started my criticism where the blame falls - at our very own feet (me included).

You say yr mate had testicular & benefited from the charity.. well why the f**k should he have to? Why are organisations like this not funded by the state & paid for by us through our taxes? Why should anyone who's ill be content with the crumbs off someone else's table? In the short term, charities do help, but long term they serve to hide the continuation of a much bigger social & political question... and to some it's too big or akward a question to be asking.

Oh & if yer impressed by "big" words.... here's another - corrugated.

Where do you stand on NGOs starbelgrade?

You do have a point, though i think that it may be a little overly idealistic. For example, there are many regions where the State simply does not function, and so "charities" provide the only recourse to treatment, or aid. Obviously that is not ideal, though it is most certainly better than nothing. True there is an arguement that the very existence of charities results in the State passing on its responsibility, but that ignores the fact that in many cases the state is simply not in a position to address certain issues, even fundamental issues such as health care, or education.

The fact that many charities are also the ones who advocate for change, and wish to see government policy change in their field of work, would also seem to validate their existence. I think referring to them as crumbs off someone else's table is also highly offensive, both to the charities who are doing work (which other people are often not willing to do) and those who have no option but to turn to them for help. In many cases they are the sole difference between life and death.

Your point may be notable for its idealism, but i do think that it fails to take into account the reality.

I don't think the idea is overly idealistic... the fact that an ideal may be difficult to achieve surely shouldn't stop one trying to achieve it - if anything it can inspire one to achieve it.

You say that "in many cases the state is simply not in a position to address certain issues, even fundamental issues such as health care, or education.".. but why is this so? Surely these are the basic functions of the state? Yes, the government consistently fails on these issues, but should we just accept this as the status quo? I don't think so... and I think it's everyone's responsibility to do something about it. There's no point in voting in a government, watch them do a s**t job of it & go "oh well, there's f**k all I can do about it". Join a pressure group, lobby your local TD, write your protests to government departmental heads... it may not achieve a great deal, but if you have a voice & a conviction, there's no point in mumbling disgruntlements to yourself!


You say that ;

"The fact that many charities are also the ones who advocate for change, and wish to see government policy change in their field of work, would also seem to validate their existence."

but is this is not also (at least partly) negated by ;

"(the) arguement that the very existence of charities results in the State passing on its responsibility,"?

By the "crumbs off someone else's table", I was not trying to be offensive, though to me the fact that many people do in fact survive because of this, IS highly offensive. Charities survive / exist on what people give them - which in most cases is a very small percentage of their dispendable income. It's a small piece of their cake - hence the use of "crumbs"... I truly believe that everyone deserves the same opportunities to decent health, education & labour and if that involves the state slicing a larger percentage of the incomes of those who can afford it, then so be it.

Believe me, I do understand the reality of what I'm talking about & in many ways, I think our arguments are very similar, although we're coming at it from very different angles! There's no way that you could close all charities tomorrow - yes, for many they are the difference between life & death, but in many cases they are also not enough - they neither have the powers or resources to provide the help to everyone that needs it, and that indeed are entitled to it, but so often denied it.

It's a long term problem - not an easy one either but although it may seem idealistic & inconcievable, it's not unachievable. Either way, there's no harm in having a decent discussion about it... the day we stop questioning things, we might as well give up - though after the results of the last general election, I thought that's what we as a country have already done.

Charity Is Selfish
The economic case against philanthropy.
By Tim Harford


Selfishness is one of those issues where economists seem to see the world differently. It's not that economists are incapable of imagining—or even modeling—altruism. They can, but they usually don't. And there's a good reason for that: People aren't selfless.

The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project estimates that charitable giving in the United States was 1.85 percent of the size of the economy in recent years, 0.84 percent in the United Kingdom, and as little as 0.13 percent in Germany. By this reckoning, then, the Germans are 99.87 percent selfish, and even the Americans are more than 98 percent selfish. That's not 100 percent, but it's pretty close.

Admittedly, if you include the time spent volunteering, you can get selfishness rates as low as 95 percent: Step forward, the Dutch. That's still not impressive. It's also an underestimate of selfish motivations. If people really were altruistic, there would be much less volunteering.

This isn't some silly tautology. If these do-gooders really were motivated by the desire to do good, they would be doing something different. It would almost always be more effective to volunteer less, work overtime, and give more. A Dutch banker can pay for a lot of soup-kitchen chefs and servers with a couple of hours' worth of his salary, but that wouldn't provide the same feel-good buzz as ladling out stew himself, would it?

In fact, the closer you look at charitable giving, the less charitable it appears to be. A recent experiment by John List, an economist at the University of Chicago, and a team of colleagues, showed that donations are less than magnanimous after all. Using controlled trials to compare different methods of door-to-door fund-raising, professor List's team discovered that it was much more effective to raise funds by selling lottery tickets than it was to raise funds by asking for money. This hardly suggests a world populated by altruists seeking to do the maximum good with their charitable cash.

More effective still was simply to make sure that the fund-raisers were attractive white girls rather than a dowdier assortment of males and females representing all shapes, races, and sizes. This dramatically increased the average contribution, because many more men decided to give money. Altruism?

Few economists are surprised by these results. Robert Frank, from Cornell, wryly observes that those organizing fund-raising drives for the United Way tend to be disproportionately real estate agents, insurance brokers, car dealers, and other people with something to sell. Many people buy charity Christmas cards, effectively giving to charity and then posting the receipts to their friends and colleagues.

Even the way we choose to dole out cash betrays our true motives. Someone with $100 to give away and a world full of worthy causes should choose the worthiest and write the check. We don't. Instead, we give $5 for a LiveStrong bracelet, pledge $25 to Save the Children, another $25 to AIDS research, and so on. But $25 is not going to find a cure for AIDS. Either it's the best cause and deserves the entire $100, or it's not and some other cause does. The scattershot approach simply proves that we're more interested in feeling good than doing good.

Many people are unconvinced by this argument—which I owe to Steven Landsburg—because they are used to diversifying their financial investments (a bit of Google stock and a bit of Exxon, too) and varying their choices (vanilla ice cream AND bananas). But those instincts are selfish: They are not intended to benefit both Google and Exxon, nor both the ice-cream company and the banana growers. With charity, the logic is different, and a truly selfless donor would bite the bullet and put his entire donation behind one cause. That we find that so hard to imagine is just one more indication of how hard it is for us to think ourselves into a truly selfless view of the world.

None of this is to say that these contributions are worthless or economically insignificant. Just don't get too starry-eyed about the motives behind them.

There's one final twist in the tail. Professor Frank and co-authors decided to find out whether economists are stingier than noneconomists. Frank's team mailed questionnaires to university professors and discovered that the economists were more than twice as likely as the rest to say they give nothing at all to charity.

At least they are honest.

To look at it from a global viewpoint is also interesting...

After the millions raised by Live Aid, a UN report estimated that 30 million people face starvation. Meanwhile EC beef, butter and wine mountains were rotting in European warehouses, farmers were ploughing crops back into the land and US corn belt fields of wheat were being burnt.

There's a bit of a modern myth that the problems of Africa are either there own fault (over population, wars) or beyond anyones control (drought, desertification). Though it's true these are contributary factors, many other countries cope with these same problems without the huge loss of life suffered by Africa (for example China, even England has been through war and drought).

The reasons cited by the UN for the deaths of these people are as follows; lack of resources from the international community, poor planning and falling prices on the commodity markets (especially for cocoa and coffee). Companies selling to Africa have tightened up credit terms while external debt levels continued to increase.
Cocoa and coffee

When Africa was first colonised, land was switched from production of food to feed the local population to the production of 'cash crops' such as cocoa, tea, coffee and sugar. These crops were exported to colonising countries at low prices. In a similar way corn was grown in Ireland during the 1845 famine. Today coffee and cocoa is still a major export of 15 African countries as they need the cash provided to keep up with debt repayments. Cocoa prices have fallen to there lowest level in 15 years while coffee is at similarity low level.


In the early 1970's many African governments borrowed heavily. About 40% of debt is owed directly to other governments. In almost all cases this money was lent on the condition that it be used to purchase arms from the donor country or that subsides be granted to multinationals based in the donor country. In this way the third world country is made to pay twice over. 25% of the debt is owed to the IMF and the World Bank. Today Africa's debt is estimated at 270 billion dollars. Repayments consume 30 per cent of export earnings.

It's obvious that the governments of the U.S., China and Europe aren't really interested in combating the crisis and these are the governments that run the UN. The last program of aid implemented by the United Nations (according to their own report) in 1986 met with little sucess. This was the plan the UN promised would revive Africa's economies. Instead, in their own words "By the end of 1990, it had become evident that the African crisis had indeed deepened...the average African continued to get poorer and suffer a persistent fall in an already meagre living standard". Now, five years later, they add that even if their latest plan was fully implemented (they call it ambitious) the average income per head in sub-Saharan Africa would only reach US$700 per annum in 25 years time. Rather than offering the solution the governments that make up the UN itself that are the problem.

So it doesn't look as if the situation will fundamentally change. But then, why should the Western governments want things any different? Africa provides the bosses with markets for the surplus goods we produce as well as cheap labour and raw materials. Live Aid showed that workers of the West are not willing to let Africa starve (as some Greens would argue), however it also showed that while the means of production and all the resulting profits are in the hands of the bosses, individual attempts at resolving the problems will do little more than make a dent in the problem. The type of massive development that Africa requires will only come about when the resources of this world are distributed according to need and not according to profit.

Starbelgrade, for the first time ever I find myself agreeing with you. Charties aren't something we should be proud of but rather reminders of how inept we are at looking after others. There's nothing I can say that will add to what you've already posted other than to say well done for saying it!

Cheers dude.