Once Upon A Time

Wednesday 9 September 2009

in the West, charities would shake their collection tins at members of the public who could  choose whether to donate, or not, to the cause.  The charity would then use the money to the best of its ability, directly aiding the cause to which it was committed.  Nowadays, we're lucky if we can tell real charities from fake ones (those that receive taxpayer money via quangos, gongos and lobbyists - see 'useful links' in the sidebar).

Now we have a 'new' charity, Witness Confident, which intends to stage mock muggings in our streets in order to compile a set of statistics showing how the we react. 
The charity will provide guidance for people who witness street crime, and what they should do next. It will also work on projects such as attaching details of witness appeals to Google street maps.
Have we all gone stark-raving mad?  To my mind,Witness Confident is no charity at all; what's the betting it's yet another taxpayer-funded lobbying group with its hands in our pockets via government largesse, telling us what to do.  All these groups use our own money to devise ever more stupid ways to spend it so they can lecture and harry us into their culturally-conformed socially-engineered little corner of the world.  We don't need any more of them.

It was only a few weeks ago we had news of PCSO's climbing through open windows in people's homes to warn them of the dangers of burglary, and then there was a report of police officers getting into people's cars, taking whatever it was that was on display, and leaving a friendly little note telling them how stupid they were and where they could collect their property.  Leave Us Alone!

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3 Responses to “Once Upon A Time”
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David said...

The Fake mugging charity. I cannot wait until; they have a fake mugging in my area. After all how am i to know it is a fake mugging, when i take offensive action against them,to assist the person being mugged. The muggers may accidently fall down the stairs, when they resist a citizens arrest. Looking forward to seeing them in action.

10 September 2009 at 02:58
Anonymous said...

Money

Year 1
At the time of our launch we have raised and are using charitable grants for our first year of £89,680 and private donations of £6,000. We have also received support in kind worth over £20,000.

In our first year we estimate our expenditure will be £188,800 and so we now need to raise £74,120 for the rest of this year.

Years 2 & 3
As shown in our application to the Nuffield Foundation, we planned expenditure to meet expected demands in our second and third years at £269,630 and £314,570 respectively. The Nuffield Foundation generously granted us the full sum we requested of them - which was to fund one post and the overheads for our second and third years.

In the current economic climate it is proving very difficult to raise the balance and we will cut our coat according to our cloth. If we keep our expenditure over the next three years to the level we expect it to be in our first year, we now need to raise £300,000 to continue this work to 2012.

16 September 2009 at 21:39
Anonymous said...

About the Foundation

The Nuffield Foundation is one of the UK's best known charitable trusts which was established in 1943 by William Morris (Lord Nuffield), the founder of Morris Motors.

Lord Nuffield wanted his Foundation to 'advance social well being', particularly through research and practical experiment. The Foundation aims to achieve this by supporting work which will bring about improvements in society, and which is founded on careful reflection and informed by objective and reliable evidence.

The Foundation's income (around £9m a year) comes from the returns on its investments. It does not fund-raise, or receive money from the Government. The Foundation's financial independence and lack of vested interests helps to ensure an impartial and even-handed approach to problems in the projects it funds.

Most of the Foundation's income is spent on grants some of which are for research and others support practical innovation or development, often in voluntary sector organisations. In both cases the preference is for work that has wide significance, beyond the local or routine. The Foundation looks to support projects that are imaginative and innovative, take a thoughtful and rigorous approach to problems, and have the potential to influence policy or practice.

The Foundation also runs a number of grant programmes that are targeted towards specific purposes. Some provide support for scientists and social scientists at the early stages of their careers; others support particular kinds of projects or people.

Finally, the Foundation sets up and runs projects of its own. The two largest are The Nuffield Council on Bioethics (which is jointly funded with the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council), and The Nuffield Curriculum Centre. The most recent is The Nuffield Adolescent Mental Health Initiative - a specific programme of research on time trends in adolescent mental health, set up by The Nuffield Foundation in 2005.

16 September 2009 at 21:41