Isn't it a weird world we live in where people will give to charity

My personal favourite is the "please sponsor me to go and do something I've always wanted to do"

 

And the vast majority will never reach a 'good cause'

 

That's why if I'm going to donate I'd much rather give to smaller charities than larger ones.

 

Same difference. Just on a smaller scale.

 

Grinds my ginger does that one.
Last year, I was asked to sponsor someone to restore an old car and drive it to the South of France. Seriously!!
People who aren’t attention and publicity seekers, who want to do something like that, save up like mad and do it as a retirement project, just for enjoyment.

 

I've genuinely always wanted to climb Everest and considered saving up to do it. It would be for me. Now I know it costs a fortune so I could either stump up and pay for my enjoyment. Ask people to pay for me to do it in the name of charity. Or stop at home.
I stopped at home.

Plus my mum would shout at me for doing something dangerous

 

Not really, the majority of people I know contribute straight from their wages

 

Rubbish. What he did was a catalyst for people to donate, just like band aid, children in need, sport relief etc. etc.
He's a great old gent that deserves every respect. This country is one of the most generous in the world.

 

that’s exactly super tykes point?

 

What I hate is the fact we have to donate to things that should be fully funded by the government through taxes. Eg
NHS
Cancer science
Care for the elderly
Forces eg help for hero’s
Hospices ( struggling to keep afloat)
I give to all these but would rather it be through taxes
Then it’s left to the individual to chose whether to donate to
Overseas causes
Animal Charities
Sponsor a child/animal
The list is endless.
Then there’s the no’s
My mate can’t get home from his expensive holiday. But didn’t take out insurance cos falling off a dune buggy pissed wasn’t meant to happen. So he chose not to cover himself for an extra few quid. like rest on us buggers do.

 

Same with RSPCA - 5 went to 10 then it was persistent calls to make it 20 - left a job so had a valid reason to cancel. Don't sign up anymore - I do my bit for my daughter's cheer team and also charity connected to them who provide activities for adults with special needs. Even did a Charity Strictly Come Dancing for them - that was interesting to say the least

 

Agreed
RNLI is also one that I think it should be taxpayer funded. It's a bloody emergency service.

 

That's my favourite. One where you have no idea if they have actually done what they say they are going to because it's not like they have a blood test regularly through the month to make sure they aren't lying.

It was like in school when people would do a sponsored fast for 24 hours to raise money for Africa. Yes because when you get home we can trust you not to eat/drink anything.

 

We've always been regular donators to charities but I'm a lot more careful about which ones.
A friend of mine ( who is genuinely one of the most decent charitable people I could ever imagine) delves quite deeply into a lot of registered charities and analyses them....some of it is quite shocking ( I won't name which ones) ....Chief Execs and staff on hundreds of thousands a year, massive portfolios of land banked property, huge legal expenses on actions against other charities or gagging orders on former staff....some are clearly businesses to fund those at the top.
He was telling me about the charity shops of one particular high profile organisation, they are a franchise, one person he knows runs six of them in South Yorkshire...that person pays a set fee to the charity, gets the use of volunteers to man the shops...free business rates, and keeps the profit from everything we donate.

 

I think Trussell Trust does something similar re franchaise

 

I don’t get it?

 

Well obviously blind people are blind. I don't know why but it made me chuckle a little imagining you editing books for them and trying to work out what that actually entails.

 

Ah, it’s basically getting the books ready to be able to be used by all e-readers, embossing machines and read-aloud softwares.

First the books are scanned in manually (it’s surprisingly hard to get digital copies we are allowed to use and obviously they don’t even exist for most past books).
Then the scans are automatically turned into text.
We compare the text to the scans and make sure they match identically (annoying if there is a mistake in the books as we have to leave it and there are some very, very old books where we have to try and do it without the scans)
We left align all pictures, put page numbers and running heads in their proper places (they never scan properly)
We use a combination of different styles on different types of text (e.g. strong for all bold, Alt 1 for anything that looks different e.g. larger, different font, different colour)
We put in contents pages and links so that it can be navigated quickly and easily

There’s a training manual that’s about 100 pages long with different things to do but you get the general idea.

All e-readers, embossing machines and read-aloud softwares work by looking out for these features and translating that into a way that is meaningful for the user.

 

That sounds like a job that is really really boring and frustrating and there's no way I could do it. But I bet it's extremely rewarding too when you know that a blind person is going to be able to enjoy a book because of your hard work.

 

It’s not so bad, it does take forever to do each book but you get to choose which one you want to do out of the ones in the work pool and you get to read a wide variety of different things you might not normally. As a lot of them are children’s and young adult books it helps me with my actual job too.