Just because all the conspiracy theorists are nutters doesn’t mean there aren’t any conspiracies.
It turns out there’s a hundred very wealthy people meeting tomorrow night in London to discuss a scheme to lobby for 50% tax relief for making big donations to charity. The idea being that the government must match their donations. Then the people who donated the money (no, not the ordinary taxpayers who the scheme would force to match the donations, but the rich people who made the donations) get to decide how the money is spent. Even if their money comes from an offshore tax shelter, they still get to influence how UK taxpayer money is spent. With the financial target being equal to the UK’s entire foreign aid budget of £5 billion a year. If I understand Marina Hyde’s article properly, it means someone can donate £1 million, get 50% tax relief on it, then get an additional £1m from the UK government to the charity of their choice.
Of course it’s unthinkable that these benefactors would try to interfere with the running of any of these charities or try to dictate their agendas or anything. Not like George W. Bush who got feted for donating billions to Africa to fight AIDS and then directed it towards an abstinence campaign rather than a treatment campaign (because the organisations doing treatment were also carrying out the occasional abortion).
But after turning the world’s financial system into their private casino, it does rather look like the same class of arrogant crazies are also trying to hijack the world’s charities. With a bail-out built into the system from the beginning, this time. It sounds insane, but the Treasury has already granted them a couple of meetings. So it’ll probably be knighthoods all round fairly soon, and our aid money spent on whatever these rich benefactors feel like selling to their new pet charities. (Gosh, hopefully not their drowned share portfolios.)
I don’t think we need another absurd top-down initiative. Let’s try bottom-up instead. We spend our money on what we choose and reward the companies that keep our values to heart. Do these companies exist?
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My objection was not necessarily the control being given to the donors, but rather giving a tax benefit to donors for one issue (the UN Millennium Development Goals) versus some other very compelling needs out there.
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