CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME, NOT WITH OXFAM.

I do my bit for charity but I've never given to the huge international corporations such as OXFAM and it seems that my reluctance to support these vast multi-nationals was the right course.

The current horror stories about abuses being perpetrated by OXFAM workers in various places, plus acknowledgement from several other similar organisations that they've also had their fair share of problems, tells me that they are more like big businesses than charities. Senior executives receive large pay packets and enjoy the same type of corporate perks as do the bosses of multinational companies. Much of the donated funds goes to maintaining huge buildings and central administrations rather than to helping those in need and now, it seems, even the money that does filter its way down to the workers on the coal face, ends up being used for the procurement of prostitutes and other unsavoury purposes.

Year after year, the general public has its pockets picked by the crooks who run these organisations; costly advertisements on television and in the newspapers show us the horrors that must be abated but, year after year, the horrors seem to stay unchanged. Famine in Africa never gets resolved, squalor in Brazil or Bangladesh remains the same. Where does the money go ?

Billions upon billions of pounds, dollars, euros, yen and heaven knows what else gets poured into the bottomless coffers of the big charities and still they ask for more; just like governments of all types they swallow our cash and squander it on their own comforts and luxuries with barely a thought for the donors whose hearts have been moved by shocking pictures of the plights of others. 

Charity used to be real but now is simply another branch of big business, though without most of the controls which real big business works under. Wasteful and corrupt, largely unaccountable and supported by taxpayers money, these organisations have become bloated and self-satisfied, basking in the glow of the good deeds which they claim to have done but with no evidence that they've done anything at all. One has only to think of the appalling case of 'Kids Company' to realise just how out of control some are and how easily they can con their sponsors.

If people must give, then they should look for charities nearer to home and that provide clear and visible help. Local hospices and organisations such as the Leonard Cheshire Homes, medical charities which seek to find cures for diseases such as cancers and arthritis but steer well clear of those with more nebulous aims such as 'helping the homeless'; after all, what does that really mean ?