Charity Names

Most Charities tend to include in their name something that gives a clue to their activities, for eaxmple
"Help the Aged", "Save the Children", "Cancer Research", "RSPCA" and "RNLI"
Some are more obscure, such as "Relate", Barnados" and McMillan Nurses", but at least they don't give a false impression of their objectives.

Thus, if I formed a charity and called it, say, "Pensioners Help" would you conclude its objectives are
a. To Provide help to pensioners
or
b. To distribute help provided by pensioners?
Most people. I suspect, would choose the first option.

Yesterday, following my piece on Wednesday about "Foreign Aid and Charities", there was a knock on the door by a collector from "Christian Aid". Unthinkingly, Mrs EP gave a suitable donation, but then decided to try to find out what they actually did and how and where they were helping Christians. Were they helping, say, the Coptic Christians in Egypt who have had their churches destroyed by militant Muslims; Perhaps they were helping Christians who are under constant threat in Pakistan, or thrown in prison is Saudi Arabia for wearing a crucifix?
This, however is what I found
"Breaking the Silence"
Our work in Gaza
Here they seem to be supporting organisations helping those whose dedicated aim is to rid the world of the "Infidel", ie Christians.
Nothing anywhere on their site about actually helping Christians.
Now, I believe I an aware of might be considered to be my Christian duties to the poor and unfortunate, and I'm also aware of the need to "turn the other cheek", but supporting one's enemies to eliminate one's  chosen religion seems to be going to far.

 Please don't call next year, or you might get a very non-Christian response.

Foreign Aid and Charities

According to one source, the UK gave £8.4 billion in foreign aid last year, which was 11% of the world total. Why should we be giving such a huge proportion of the total aid budget? What percentage does the rest of the EU give?
The Daily Mail works this out as an average of £500 per family. On the basis of there being approximately 26 million income tax payers, it works out at around £325 for each of these tax payers.
However you look at it, it is a lot of money, which is being given to countries against, I suspect, the wishes of the majority of these enforced donors.
So as far as Mrs EP and myself are concerned, we are contributing a large sum in foreign aid to causes with which we do not necessarily agree, and being firm believers in the old adage "Charity begins at Home", we have now decided that we are not going to give any further donations to charities providing foreign aid.

I am proposing to put a further sign on my front door (adjacent to the one about door-to-door salesmen, etc,) which will be broadly as follows

Charity Collectors Please Note

"Charity begins at Home"

The Government contributed an estimated £500 per family last year in foreign aid, and I believe that this satisfies any moral obligation that this family might have towards such causes.

Therefore, we intend to restrict any further giving solely to charities carrying out medical research and to those acting for the benefit of English citizens and spending less than 5% of their income outside the UK. Preference will be given to local charities run by volunteers.

Please do not ring if the charity for which you are collecting does not fall within the above category.

In addition, where a charity sends a pre-paid envelope, it will get a polite acknowledgement along the above lines, asking them to remove our names from their mailing lists.