Mail.
The man who set up a charity project to help British terrorist victims, after his son was killed in an IRA attack in England, last night attacked David Cameron’s ‘offensive and thoughtless’ refusal to throw it a cash lifeline.Unfortunately for Mr Parry (or indeed the Mail) he doesn't realise that Survivors For Peace project is the wrong sort of charity in that it is not in place to tell the government what the government wants to hear unlike Alcohol Awareness and the various anti-smoking charities who are virtually all taxpayer funded to lobby in the government to do what it wants to do anyway. Nor like Oxfam and others does it lobby the government to spend our foreign aid budget where the government intend to
Colin Parry, whose 12-year-old son Tim was killed in the IRA bombings in Warrington in 1993, spoke out after the Prime Minister turned down a plea for £150,000 to rescue his Survivors For Peace project.
Mr Parry asked Mr Cameron and Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers for the money weeks before the scheme is due to lose its Lottery funding in April.
But he said he was shocked by a letter from Number 10 advising him to use the internet to find the money.
‘It is offensive for Mr Cameron to suggest that after nearly 20 years of running a charity I don’t know where to get money,’ said Mr Parry.
‘I do know and I have been to them all. His thoughtless response suggests he doesn’t see us as a priority. He expects us to muddle through, but we can’t.
‘Unless we find a wealthy benefactor we will have to make our staff redundant and cut adrift all the people who depend on us for support.’
And sadly worst of all, Survivors For Peace project doesn't offer a huge salary for its executive directors aka friends of the political classes as easy money for life jobs.
In short Survivors For Peace project is a genuine charity although relying on the National Lottery for funding was probably a mistake. The National Lottery is really only interested in trendy causes that involve minorities not actually helping the heroes of a forgotten war.
So Mr Parry's charity will fold because it's not the right sort of charity and is helping the wrong sort of people. That's a pretty damning indictment of the government and the political classes, I doubt they'll care though, not like there's anything in it for them, which I presume is how they judge a charities worth...
3 annotations:
If a charity cannot survive on donations, then folding is the right thing - irrespective of how worthy the cause. No charity should receive money from the state. None, nil, nada, zilch. I don't care how much good they might do - the principle of charity is that the money is a gift freely given. Money from the state is not freely given it is taken by force with the threat of violence if we refuse to comply. That is not charity, that is a protection racket. If enough people don't want to give, then the charity is not of sufficient value and like a business goes to the wall. Too bad. The state should not be taking our money to prop up unpopular charities. And it certainly should not be taking money form us to fund vile lobby groups such as ASH.
I'm no fan of fake charities that are little more than tax payer funded lobbying groups but there are local charities in most communities that provide services to the disabled that local councils are legally obliged to provide. Sub contracting to those charities is a cost effective way of meeting an obligation that often results in a better service to those that use it.
Part of your council tax goes to a local charity that is assisting local disabled kids. Your council tax would be higher if the charity was not involved in the provision.
The real danger to genuine charities, is not the fact that they may fold due to donations made but, the fake ones give the whole notion of charity a bad name.
Like others, it is sad to see such a genuine charity go, but that does not make his cause and the work that he done any less valuable.
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