Are we all gathered? Malted milk biscuits ready for dunking? And so I’ll begin……..

Way back when I was a child….yeah ok, way way waaaaaay back, charities appeared very different from what they do today, better or worse?  I’ll leave that up to you. But from personal experience I find the hard sell “Gis ya money” a turn off.  We can’t seem to switch on the telly without someone trying to daily guilt trip  us with an advert. There seems to be an endless menagerie, child, donkey, puppy, all looking sadly up at the camera while quivering their bottom lip, Just £3 a month just £6 a month just….just….just….

I’m not here to bad mouth individual charities but I’m sure many could operate far better than they do when it comes to using your money because after all it is your money they’re spending. We have programmes about the banking scandals and programmes such as Benefit Street, but are charity organisations really any different when it comes to being on the level?  Sadly the majority of your money is spent on fat cat salaries and other questionable ways. There are so many Charities listed in the UK now the Charity commission have admitted it’s struggling to keep up with all of their activities or even able to confirm if some of them are genuine.  One major and well known charity spent over 18 million of its 21 million raised on television ads, meaning just over 2 million was left for charitable purposes. But what does “Charitable purposes” mean? Whatever a charity wants it to mean.

                Watford Observer:

Another well-known charities accounts showed that out of the £115 million raised by you only £29 million actually went on front line services and the sort of thing you see in the television ads.  

The reason I’m so proud of one of the charities I support Invest In ME is because it’s run entirely by a few volunteers who themselves either suffer with the illness or are parents of children with ME. There are no salaries; every penny that’s raised goes where it should go and alongside the Lets Do It For ME team who are also voluntary, what they have achieved is nothing short of phenomenal. This week some excellent news was posted that the milestone of £500.000 has been reached which has allowed the charity to  initiate in their own words “Possibly the two most important research projects for ME in the UK – a gut microbiota study in the Norwich Research Park with IFR/UEA and a project leading to a clinical trial of the rituximab drug in cooperation with UCL”

 To continue the work the next target is a million.

You can read their press release and further details here:

http://www.investinme.org/IIME-Newslet-1502-01.htm

               Watford Observer:

But proving that people power really does work, I believe Invest In ME & the Lets Do It For ME team should be held up as an example of how a charity could and should run.  If the public stopped putting their hard earned cash in the pockets of executives, managers, communication experts and a plethora of other staff,  it would force charities to change their behaviour.

Talking of behaviour, some of you will remember I’ve been waiting since July 2014 for a hospital appointment to the Watford chest clinic having already had two appointments cancelled?  Drumroll……I’ve had a third appointment sent through for April , I’m tempted to start a sweepstake on the chances of it actually happening, could it be third time lucky? I’ll keep you posted.

You wait around for a letter from the NHS and then suddenly three drop through the  door, I opened the second one…… you know you’re cracking on a bit when the party invitations are replaced by medical check- ups and mammogram invites, and it was indeed a mammogram invite and to let me know a date will be sent shortly. I’m not relishing the idea of having my bits squashed into resembling poor looking pepperoni pizzas but I’ll go all the same. Then I opened the third letter and it was the same mammogram invite as the second letter.

                           Watford Observer:

“Why have they sent me two?” I asked my mother, rather perplexed

“One for each breast” she replied

I knew there was a reason I let her out from under the floorboards every now and then, she’s a fount of wisdom.

                                     Til Next Week, Stay Blessed

                                         Back Before Elvis XXX

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http://www.investinme.org/