Shropshire Star

Letter: Charity should begin at home – not given to rich Chinese nation

It seems that a lot of the general public are fooled by the word charity.

Published

The amount of brochures delivered over the Christmas period to do with charities was massive, yet not on any of the brochures that I received did it state what the salary was of the chief executive or boss was, a lot of these people are members of the establishment and are paid far more than our Prime Minister.

It recently stated in the papers that some of these bosses were on over £300,000 per year, and that the charities that these people were head of were being given millions of pounds out of the foreign aid budget and this comes out of the public pocket as tax. On top of these fabulous salaries they also get expenses and a pension, now that is what I call charity beginning at home.

All charity documentation should show just what the bosses remuneration is, people might think twice then before donating to that charity. These salaries are only one of the things that happen and result in only a minuscule amount reaching the people in need of it – the rest is creamed off by the establishment in what they term as admin fees, the establishment never give away anything, it is just not their way of life. When the bosses salaries come down to a realistic figure, that is in line with current wage standards, then you may be able to call it charity. A lot of ordinary people give their time free in helping out with collections and working in charity shops, and I admire them for it, but the boss way up the ladder just takes them for granted.

We still give aid to China and I suppose that some of it could have been behind the massive transfer fee offered to a certain soccer player. It was £80 million plus and worked out at over £600,000 per week. Do you honestly think that China needs our charity? I certainly do not.

Back in the 1940s when I was at infant school we were expected to donate an old penny per week to the Chinese, we now have history repeating itself. I just wonder how much we have given to China over that period of time, billions I would say. We must stop this foreign aid going to these type of countries, I mean they have a far larger GDP than we have. Charity begins at home.

Mr K Beddis, Yockleton

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