Tag Archives: donate

What does this Egyptian billionaire want from Sunak’s Tories in return for £5 million bung?

Food banks will start turning people away as demand outstrips supply

Food bank: this image was taken a few years ago – now they’re struggling to fill the shelves, and considering turning away visitors.

That’s that, then: no doubt the Tories will be delighted that they have finally overloaded destitute Britons’ last hope.

The food bank network has stated categorically that stratospheric energy bills and rocketing inflation are putting “unsustainable” demand on them – and they are going to have to start turning people away.

Those people will starve.

Food banks have already seen a ‘dramatic’ surge in people needing them since April – when the energy price cap shot up 54%.

This has been made even more disastrous by the fact they are also seeing a decrease in donations.

One in five providers say they have already resorted to making their parcels smaller.

A fall in donations is entirely consistent with the situation: the rich who can ride out the current crisis aren’t going to donate to help the poor – and those on middle-incomes who normally do are suddenly facing poverty themselves.

The Independent Food Aid Network (Ifan UK) has appealed to the Tory government for “urgent, cash-first interventions” – which This Writer predicts will do about as much good as spitting into the wind.

Source: Food banks are unsustainable and will have to ‘turn people away this winter’

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https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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B&M is donating £1million to UK food banks to fight coronavirus-related supply gap

This is wonderful news and B&M has set an excellent example for other businesses to follow.

I hope they will.

Food banks have been struggling as members of the public quit funding and donating to them in order to panic-buy goods in anticipation of the coronavirus crisis.

Discount retailer B&M [has] announced a national £1 million donation to support UK food banks.

Each one of its 670 stores will support a local foodbank with a £1,500 donation of food, cleaning and personal hygiene goods to reach struggling families.

Source: B&M is donating £1million to UK food banks amid coronavirus crisis – Birmingham Live

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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The tide is turning: Crowdfunding campaign against ‘anti-Semitism’ lies leads to apology and donation

Mike Sivier (right) with the late, great Tony Benn.

This was an extremely pleasant surprise.

You will be aware that This Writer has been the victim of several unfounded and vindictive accusations of anti-Semitism, including attacks in the national press, that I have been fighting these claims through the press regulator IPSO, and also launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the costs of any libel actions I may have to bring to court.

A few days ago, a comment was posted to the crowdfunding page. I wanted to draw your attention to it.

It stated [boldings mine]: “Several months ago I left a post on the Vox Political website, regarding the culpability of Mr Mike Sivier’s engagement in anti-Semitism, namely that he had made anti-Semitic statement’s regarding the Holocaust. These statements were wrongly reported in the national press and media, and have since been proven to be entirely untrue.

“I apologise without reservation for my comments that agreed with these reports, and in the light of findings retract and reverse my accusations. I am ashamed that these public comments, reinforced by myself have been allowed to tarnish the character of Mr Sivier and adversely affect his journalistic professionalism, his reporting website and personal profile with unknown damage to his business interests.

“I hope that he is able to recover damages from these original sources to compensate him in some small way for what are now evidently clear and slanderous lies designed to be spread to tarnish his career and political journalism. I myself will be making a contribution to his campaign costs and encourage others to do the same to fight the current trend of underhand press reporting now prevalent in this country, to hold them to account and make an example of their political manipulation that affects us all.”

I was hugely impressed and also genuinely moved by this comment.

It is no easy thing for any of us to admit a mistake, especially after having made it on a widely-read public forum like Vox Political.

This one was, as my mother would describe it, “handsomely done” and I wanted my own appreciation of the gesture – and gratitude for the promise of funds to help my campaign – to go on record.

I hope the person who posted those words (I won’t cause embarrassment by naming him, although you can find out who it is by visiting the crowdfunding site) will stand as an example to others – and in contrast with the cowards who did indeed tarnish my good name and don’t have the guts to admit what they did was wrong.

Visit our JustGiving page to help Vox Political’s Mike Sivier fight anti-Semitism libels in court

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Disability News Service holds the DWP to account – and is in trouble. Please help

John Pring’s Disability News Service is iconic among the new media news sites, focusing on just one subject: The hazards faced by people with disabilities under the UK government.

And it needs your help.

The site will not be able to continue for much longer unless it receives donations from individuals and subscriptions from disability-focused organisations.

This Writer would certainly advise Mr Pring to take adverts as well – if he runs his advertising himself, he’ll have full control over the kind of ad that goes up and the cost to the advertiser. Consider it, please, John!

But for now, the more people who help with personal financial contributions, the better.

Over the last nine or so years, Disability News Service has broken scores of important stories.

Many have been about the austerity-related assault on disability benefits and other support and services.

For the last nine years, I have resisted asking visitors to the DNS website for money. Because so many of its stories have been about the grinding, austerity-related poverty faced by many disabled people, it did not feel right to do so. However, DNS will not be able to continue its work without a new source of funding.

My life savings have gradually trickled away over the last nine years and it is time to accept that without a significant new source of funding, DNS will not be here to celebrate its 10^th anniversary. For that reason, although access to the website will always remain free, I am asking for the first time for voluntary contributions (please note that DNS is not a charity) to allow DNS to keep operating.

Please note that this is not aimed at those who are struggling financially. Please do not contribute if you cannot easily afford to do so. But if you can, your support might allow DNS to continue well into its second decade.

I would also like to put out a fresh plea to any disability-related organisations that would like to subscribe to DNS. Subscribing will allow you to access the stories hours before they are published on the DNS site every week, and to use the news stories to brief colleagues or to publish on your own websites and via social media. All such subscriptions would also help ensure the future financial sustainability of DNS.

Source: COMMENT: Nine years of breaking important stories. Now DNS needs your help

Visit our JustGiving page to help Vox Political’s Mike Sivier fight anti-Semitism libels in court

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Banksy donates funds from latest art sale to anti-arms campaigners

[Image: Banksy.]

This Site has already reported gory Tory Michael ‘Bomber’ Fallon’s plan to sell arms to anybody, regardless of their credentials, as soon as he possibly can.

Here’s the alternative view, courtesy of Banksy.

This Writer would support Banksy’s worldview over Fallon’s, every time.

Street artist Banksy has donated £205,000 from the sale of his latest artwork to peace campaigners.

‘Civilian Drone Strike’ shows three drones bombing a child-like drawing of a house, with a shocked girl and her dog next to it.

Money from the sale of the piece was split between Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), and human rights group Reprieve.

‘Civilian Drone Strike’ was on display at the Stop the Arms Fair art exhibition in east London, which ended yesterday (September 15).

The exhibition was being held alongside the world’s largest arms fair, the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI), to highlight the inhumanity of the arms trade.

Source: Banksy donates funds from sale of latest artwork to anti-arms campaigners

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How many MPs really stuck to their pay rise charity pledge?

[Image: The Sun (and I never thought I’d be typing that into a Vox Political caption!)]

Pro-SNP commenters to Vox Political have queried the claim that only 26 out of the UK’s 650 MPs have donated their £7,000 pay rise to charity, after 69 promised to do so.

They have claimed that all 56 SNP MPs have handed over the difference between MPs’ pay before the pay rise and the current rate to charity.

So let’s try to straighten the record. The report in The Sun states the following:

According to campaign website Donate My Pay Rise, 20 Tories, 30 Labour members, three Lib Dems, 15 from the SNP and one Green had all pledged to help good causes.

But only 25 confirmed to us they had donated or were currently preparing to do so.

However, one MP who had not made the pledge, confirmed he had donated his pay rise.

Dozens on both sides of the House refused to say if they had given it away or pocketed it themselves.

Not a single SNP MP who publicly pledged to donate the money to worthy local causes responded to questions from The Sun.

Source: MPs go back on pay rise charity pledge | The Sun |News|Politics

Now, it’s possible that the SNP’s Westminster contingent have refused to discuss the matter with The Sun on principle, as it is a right-wing, Tory-loving excuse for a newspaper that wasn’t worth wrapping around your chips when you were still allowed to do that.

But the fact that only 15 SNP MPs appear to have made the pledge, according to the campaigning site Donate My Pay Rise, plays very poorly for the Party.

News reports do state that the Party’s leadership ordered SNP MPs to donate the pay increase to charity. But Donate My Pay Rise, which quotes Angus Robertson from the article to which I’ve linked, only attributes the comment to him personally and not the Parliamentary Party as a whole. It is, in fairness, a comment that could be interpreted either way.

For the sake of fairness, This Blog will have to side with the evidence available. For now, that means The Sun and Donate My Pay Rise.

However:

If all 56 SNP MPs really have passed this money on to charity, perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is to contact Donate My Pay Rise, explain that Mr Robertson’s comment extended to the entire Parliamentary Party, and provide proof that the money has indeed been passed to charity at some point prior to the publication of the Sun article on October 31.

That seems the most reasonable solution to this question.

However (again): Even with all 56 SNP MPs contributing their shares of the pay rise to charity, that makes a total of just 81 MPs contributing out of 650, leaving a “silent majority” (Tory Tobias Ellwood’s words, not mine) of 569 pocketing the cash.

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Why has Osborne let us down over offshore tax evasion, again?

Remember back in school, when you were taught that we have laws in place to ensure justice for everybody?

Isn’t it a shame you weren’t taught the facts?

It seems every clearer that laws are written by whoever is rich enough to buy the politicians who enact them – especially in a Conservative, or Conservative-led, government.

So – for example – if you are one of the elite super-rich who, between them, have an alleged £20+ trillion stowed in offshore tax haven bank accounts, you could happily bung a few thousand – or indeed a few hundred thousand – to the Tories to stop their Chancellor from increasing the powers of HM Revenue & Customs to track them down and make them pay their fair share.

That could explain the discrepancy between what Tory Chancellor George Osborne said in April and what he’s saying now.

Back in April, he told us he was consulting on a new criminal offence carrying a possible prison sentence that will ensnare people with undeclared foreign income – even if they did not intend to evade taxes.

Osborne said: “We are changing the balance of the law so the burden of proof falls on those who are hiding their money offshore and we don’t have to prove that they intended to do so.”

“It is totally unacceptable for people not to pay the tax that is due and the message will be clear now with this new criminal offence that if you’re evading tax offshore, there is no safe haven and we will find you.”

What is he saying about it now?

Absolutely nothing.

Instead, the plan to make offshore tax evasion a criminal offence has been quietly dropped from a draft Financial Bill that was published last week.

According to Citywire, Ray McCann, partner at Pinsent Masons, told the Financial Times: “I think that the proposal is now likely to quietly disappear. There is no substance to it [italics mine].”

Perhaps we should be checking for more substantial donations to the Conservative Party, between April and today’s date, instead.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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The REAL Charities are the Ones worth supporting – Jayne Linney

[Image: Daily Telegraph.]

Vox Political is saddened to learn that fellow blogger Jayne Linney has been struggling with depression; however she has written an article today based on this Daily Mirror piece – “Top charities spend 60% of cash raised on private firm which hounds people to donate”.

“I’ve argued for many years that far too much money given to these agencies, fails to reach the people the organisations purport to aid,” she writes. “I’ve even disappointed my 84 year old mum, who readers know I adore, when I refuse to buy the raffle tickets she receives twice a year, regular as clockwork, from several of these orgs. For me the Top ‘Charities’ no longer qualify as such, and it’s time for the Charities Commission to do its job and remove this status, lets call them what they are Big Businesses.

“I worked in the voluntary sector for many years, providing a real service to local people. Such projects are run by regular people, who find themselves forced to battle with these multi-million pound companies, in their efforts to raise less money than Stroke pay for fund-raising to keep their service going. I do not believe this is Right and I’m not convinced people who donate hard earned money, expect it to go to the same company who then hassle them by calling them at home with a Hard Sell?”

The lady makes a good point. Visit her blog to read the rest of the article and see her conclusions.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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Michael Fabricant wants to increase our chances of acquiring blood-borne infections. Why?

Misinformed: Michael Fabricant wants to lift a ban on gay men giving blood – but seems seriously misinformed about the subject. [Image: Evening Standard.]

Perhaps he has been flailing around for a campaigning subject, what with all the good ones being in opposition to the Conservatives.

Perhaps he thinks pushing otherwise-healthy people into an already-overstretched National Health Service will be a good advert for privatisation. It’s crazy, but it’s a possibility.

There can be few other reasons for Michael Fabricant’s weak bid to poison UK blood supplies by allowing people who may not know they are infected to donate.

He reckons a ban on sexually promiscuous gay men should be lifted as straight men who behave in the same manner do not suffer the same discrimination, which is insane.

There are several things wrong with this. Firstly, he is misrepresenting the issue.

The ban does not affect only sexually promiscuous gay men – it affects any man who has had sex with another man, with or without a condom. This clearly discriminates against gay men who are in a monogamous relationship in which both partners are free of infection. They should not be covered by the ban.

Sexually promiscuous gay men, however, should.

Secondly, the ban was put in place – unless the memory cheats – because blood supplies donated by gay men were discovered to be infected with HIV. Anybody can see that a ban on anything that could spread HIV is entirely sensible and should only be lifted if technology has moved on enough for doctors to spot infected blood immediately or screen out the infection in blood that has been donated.

It has been suggested that this has happened and the time period of the ban should be reduced to the period it takes for screening tests to be effective. This seems reasonable, as long as a prospective donor can show that they have been through the screening process. Professor John Forsyth of the government’s Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs has made it clear that the situation is under constant review.

So Fabricant should be calling for a reduction in the ban – not its outright removal.

Thirdly: In fact, Fabricant himself skimmed over the responsible approach to the issue, which is that “neither straight people nor gay people who have had unsafe sex should give blood.” He added, “within 12 months,” but we could probably reduce that according to when it is possible to screen for infection, as suggested above.

Perhaps that would result in too few people volunteering to give any blood at all. You can’t blame them for that – Fabricant’s Tories have forced hard times on the masses.

Who can blame them for turning to a bit of good old-fashioned earthy sex to cheer themselves up?

Note: This article has been revised after several commenters informed this blog of gaps in Fabricant’s information and of technological advances. VP is grateful to them.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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Vox Political

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Tag Archives: donate

What does this Egyptian billionaire want from Sunak’s Tories in return for £5 million bung?

Like this:

Food banks will start turning people away as demand outstrips supply

Like this:

B&M is donating £1million to UK food banks to fight coronavirus-related supply gap

Like this:

The tide is turning: Crowdfunding campaign against ‘anti-Semitism’ lies leads to apology and donation

Like this:

Banksy donates funds from latest art sale to anti-arms campaigners

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How many MPs really stuck to their pay rise charity pledge?

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Why has Osborne let us down over offshore tax evasion, again?

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The REAL Charities are the Ones worth supporting – Jayne Linney

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Michael Fabricant wants to increase our chances of acquiring blood-borne infections. Why?

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