Charity

Lots of us feel virtuous about making donations to charity, but few of us make, let alone boast about making, donations to government. But why not?

My thinking goes along the lines that we trust governments to do good stuff with the money that we give them. They put a lot of effort into doing the best they can, given all the circumstances. We may not like everything they do, but that is the way of democracy; you cannot please everybody all of the time. So why not give them some more?

Giving to charity, perhaps for stately homes, for dogs or for distressed pit ponies has the advantage that one is applying a little bit extra to something of one's own choice, something which one might think deserves that little bit extra. Which is fine, but by giving to government one is dumping on them all the bother of deciding which causes are worthy.

There is also the consideration that, just like governments, lots of what big charities do is not going to please all their donors. So I, for example, don't care for a lot of what the National Trust gets up to, but I still give them money from time to time.

So why don't governments make it easy to make donations to them? Set up some webpage somewhere, fill in the amount, click here and the job is done; maybe set up an app for the younger generation. Maybe publish daily tallies of the total collected. While as things stand, it may be that the shredding noticed at reference 1 is as good as anything.

So I write off to the Treasury to ask them what to do and they reply, more or less by return of post, that the thing to do is more or less what was envisaged at reference 2, or to be more precise, to send a cheque payable to CRND, to someone who lives fairly near the Bank of England. This has now been done and I shall wait with interest to see how long it takes them to cash my cheque. Transaction charges probably in excess of 1% of the amount involved. But this post apart, I shall forbear from offering the Treasury any further suggestions.

PS: one needs to remember that the sort of webpage I talk of above is not free. Setting such a thing up and servicing it might well be dearer than processing cheques, at least until the thing lifts off a bit.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/jack-shred.html.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=Shrewsbury+Lamb.