New Year Joy

It happened just as regularly as the female period, the seasons, and getting drunk at a stag night;

Yes, the humble post christmas charity porn otherwise known as charitable causes by using emotional blackmail to extort money from the guillable.

Now, most posters know that I rarely watch television, but while visiting friends and family over the festive period I am usually exposed to an overdose of TV (against my will) and while I avoid it as much as possible, it appears that the default position of the majority of people is to switch it on automatically for some reason; and you cannot always avoid it, but this year appears to be dominated by charity adverts otherwise known as "give us your dosh" at any price, for children in Syria, now I don't live in syria, work in Syria, and I have no associations with whatever war is going on in Syria or the parties involved in it, or really care what they are fighting against, or for, so why are we being bombarded with TV charity adverts? surely the cost of these continual adverts runs into £millions, so save the money and spend it in Syria.

I received a telephone call from one of my contract managers who said he had an issue with a site closed for the Christmas holidays and he was going to go straight there and look at the problem and if he could resolve it then he would deal with it so he didn't have to turn site men out over the holiday, so I returned home and got my company car and went to work, oh, how quiet it was with nobody there and I decided that as our telephone switchboard witholds our number, it may be time for a little festive cheer for me.

From what I couold glean (and I stand to be corrected) this advert claimed that if I gave £3 then it COULD buy a blanket for one child, so I rang my other half and asked her to get me the telephone number as I was feeling charitable (NOT) and a short while later she said it was text and they had a telephone number underneath it and she texted it to my work mobile and I decided to give them a ring and offter to donate 100 blankets as I was feeling charitable, and after working through a melee of automated options, none of which included blankets, I got a human being.
I simply said I would donate 100 blankets and she said that's £300 and I asked how she arrived at this amazing conclusion and she claimed that if I was referring to their current TV campaign it equated to £3 per blanket and if I was donating 100 blankets that equalled £300, I asked if she had been listening and she claimed she had, but I thought she had too much sherry trifle minus the trifle bit, and she began asking for my name and bank details which were obviously refused and I asked her for a delivery address and their opening times and this question proved a little too difficult for her. I asked for this information again and she was really confused now, perhaps she had drunk too much Christmas spirit, and she said they could not accept blankets, only cash, and I asked why she couldn't accept blankets when they were running an appeal for blankets and I was offering them 100 blankets for free, and I said I could also ship them to their premises when she gave me their address and opening times, and she said they couldn't do that.

So what is the point in running an appeal which claims that if you donate £3 it COULD buy a child a blanket when they clearly were not buying blankets and simply misleading people into giving them money, and she claimed that they bought in bulk to get these discounts and any surplus cash goes into their bank account, so I said they were trying to obtain money under false pretences then as only some of it going to buying blankets and they are keeping the rest and not telling people this, and she simply said that if I did not give them cash, she would terminate this call and put th phone down on me; and this is neither charitable or in the Christmas spirit. What it clearly shows is how these charities clearly and deliberately mislead people into giving them money and nothing more.

On my way home I saw a group of English homeless people and a nearby cafe which was open so I went and bought 14 of them a hot dinner and drink instead, and it cost much less to buy them a hot meal and drink and they all showed their appreciation for this gesture, and they were charitable.