In yesterday's post, we received a letter from Friends of the Earth. This was an unsolicited letter, but clearly there is a record somewhere on a database, because it was properly addressed rather than one of those shitty things sent through to "The Occupier" by Virgin Media and British Telecom. Unfortunately the letter has been of no benefit to anyone, other than the Post Office. It remains unopened; in fact, it is about to be re-posted with "Return To Sender" on it.
The window envelope has, on its front side, a large message which says:
Recycling this won't help the environment
As you can imagine, I have reacted angrily. It is ready to re-post, and I have added to the end of this, the words -
Your sending it didn't either!
I think it is criminal that Friends of the Earth has chosen to send junk mail, and has the fuckin' nerve to put a message on the front of the envelope designed to make me feel bad. The fuckers are suggesting that if I recycle the envelope, I'll not be doing any good, and I am obliged to open it and no doubt consider some lame option to sponsor a Monkey Puzzle Tree whilst China and other fast-developing countries pour more pollutants into the world each year than we could ever do in 1000 years.
On the back of the junk mail is a weird claim:
Making life better for people by inspiring solutions to environmental problems.
I submit that spending people's money on junk mail (even if it was printed on recycled paper) is a waste of money, and whatever the claims about recycling being environmentally friendly, it is a self defeating approach if the very thing you are producing through recycling is in fact not needed - ie. junk mail. So, FOE is wasting time, money and recycling capacity by sending out junk mail to suggest to recipients that they'd better not simply recycle the letter because that would be doing fuck all to help the environment. Well, forgive me, but by sitting here minding my own business, I am in fact neutral. The junk mail is costing the planet something, and I am now forced to send it back in the hope that it might prevent future junk mail.
Registered charities are not always the sound entities they profess to be. Many registered charities try to raise money, but in fact operate like any commercial organisation by speculating, to accumulate. I am sure that the returns are supposed to justify actions. If by spending £50,000 on advertising, a charity raises £60,000, it will claim success and that good has come of it. But, I say that those giving the £60k to charity will be rather miffed to know that only a sixth of their contributions were actually useful, and even that will perhaps be reduced to cover other running costs. I saw a week or two ago that a fund raiser had been dismissed despite having raised enormous sums for a charity. His latest efforts (on his hands and knees in a snail costume) raised something like £28,000. But because the charity spent more (cannot remember if it was £35,000 or £50,000) in promoting the event, his massive efforts were pointless.
There are far too many charities in the UK. Those at the top earn a decent living out of the organisations they represent, while people at the lower end put in work mostly as volunteers. The many organisations waste enormous sums covering costs that could be reduced by mergers. In the commercial world, companies buy each other out, consolidate and look for 'synergies' to improve finances and ensure a sound footing for the future. Charities love to carry on regardless, and there will be hundreds of charities all doing similar things, desperate for cash. Madness, and all of this is actually at the expense of the supposed beneficiaries of the charitable efforts!
Finally, the bigger charities, which have the highest profiles and incomes, are awful at disclosing real information about how they operate - not least the fact that they keep enormous reserves of cash - money which ought to be used for the target of their ventures.
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