charity
Charitable giving
An investigation in a national newspaper has found that charitable donations have been in free-fall as the number of donors crumbles due to the credit crunch. The general response has been to urge the great and the good to open their hearts, and their pockets to save the day. How quaint, to believe that in the face of capital loss people will band together in solidarity to help out the weak...
"It's a nice idea but it'll never work." That's the killer sentence which is thrown at anarchists time and again by people trying to justify capitalism. Yet year after year, these same people either rely on, or probably give time/money to, a vast network of aid organisations which aim to put a bandage on the worst excesses of their favoured 'ism'.
Catalyst #17
Solidarity Federation freesheet, produced June 08
April 24 – hundreds of thousands to walk out
On Thursday April 24 thousands of civil servants, coastguards, council workers, FE lecturers and charity workers will join a national teachers strike of 200,000.
Employer attacks on workers' pay is the main issue at stake.
Teachers in the NUT are walking out over their pay deal which was supposed to be revised when inflation rose, but the government refused: effectively cutting their wages.
Shelter charity workers to strike again
Workers at homelessness charity Shelter will be striking on 24 April alongside tens of thousands of other workers against attacks on pay and conditions.
The strike will continue on 25 April, and will be the second two-day stoppage.
public and third sector
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in the public and charity sectors. It includes housing, but does not include most nationalised industries like health, transport or security forces.
No free lunches
Following a concerted campaign by charities and volunteers, the Department of Work and Pensions have backed down on an attempt to remove the right of volunteers to be paid for their lunchtime meals.
Voluntary organisations up and down the country were livid at the attempt to make life harder for unemployed volunteers.
The Department for Work and Pensions issued a leaflet last month for claimants wishing to volunteer to do charity work, stating that they can´t have their food expenses reimbursed, as their benefit money already covers their food costs.
Make Poverty History closes down, but did it succeed?
Last month the campaigning coalition Make Poverty History (MPH) decided to wind itself up. So has poverty been made history?
You may not have noticed it, but poverty has become history. Or so one has to presume due to the closure.
The same impression – that we have turned a corner in the struggle to eradicate global poverty – is conveyed by a book published last November called You’re History! In it a collection of notables headed by Bob Geldof explain how individuals can change the world.
From state provision to charity sector - the friendly face of privatisation
From the Bulgarian education system to the Bolivian water supply, capitalists love nothing more than turning an area of life previously financed by universal taxation into a source of profit.
The announcement that the government’s new get-tough-on-disabled-people regime will not be implemented by a government department is an indicator of a much wider process - the wholesale privatisation of public services in Britain. The ‘assessment’ of disabled people, care homes, employment and training services, the justice system; all are up for grabs.
An anarchist look at the world of the charity mugger
21st century indulgences, chugging and corporate ch ch-ing - one worker's account and analysis of working as a street fundraiser.
Looking into it, chugging is a world with many nebulous traditions clashing. For the major charities it's simple. The donations they receive on an ongoing basis through direct debit allow for clean, efficient and long term budgeting as we had it drilled into our heads in training.
