Latest:
Charity’s Salaries: Justified or Not?
General Rant, 29.01.12
In a climate where we moan about banker’s salaries – which we can do little about when they control the money – and footballer’s salaries – which again lack our control thanks to society’s interest in the sport as if it were a God of some kind – why do we overlook the salaries being dished out to the top heads of national charities?
This issue has been flagged up all over the internet when you put it into a quick Google search and it seems to cause the same common frustration. Unlike these corporate and celeb figures who are given fortunes on a yearly basis, charities are founded on donating and a lot of the lower members do their work entirely voluntarily.
Yet, according to The Guardian Society, for every £1,000 we donate to charity £4.49 will go to one, single person: the chief executive. In a quick glance over the paper’s job advertising, we can see starting salaries for not even the top positions being paid huge sums: Macmillan Cancer Support’s Central London Director of Regional Fundraising can earn up to £85,000 in their first year. Likewise their North West and East Regional Directors can rake up over £44,000 per year. How much do you donate to charity? Probably a tiny amount of the sum of money these people take away with them.
Music for Youth Chief Executive’s position has an advertised starting salary of £70,000 per year. This is a charity which fashions itself on supporting and investing in young people’s music. A lot of people benefit from charities such as this, but what about those who don’t? Surely the CE could survive on a little less than this and support a large number of new events? It’s ridiculous.
It’s the same for our huge charities. Cancer Research UK Chief Exec takes around £140,000 per year – even with taxes this can make him a wealthy man indeed. According to The Guardian Society, the Chief Executive of the British Heart Foundation also has a salary exceeding £100k; ChildLine’s Chief exec takes £65k (a 10k increase on last year); National Trust’s Chief Exec £115,000 per year too.
Of course we need these people to keep the fundraising rolling in and of course they’re in a career which gives a huge amount to society. But when we witness the average salary of a major charity chief exec breaching £79,805 per year with many of the people under them being volunteers, when we see they take an average 5% pay rise on their previous year’s salary despite the Bank of England showing predicted sharp decrease in inflation this year.
It seems disappointing. Although we want the best people to take these positions and thus need to offer an attractive wage, wouldn’t we rather have people running it who have a passion for charity and not simply because of the big pay-rates? Yet most of all, what can we possibly do about it? We’ll keep giving because we know they give back, so we’ll likewise keep paying for these people’s salaries – justified or not.
Swearing and the Watershed
General Rant, 15/11/11 - 15:25 GMT
Many people debate whether or not swearing should be allowed before the watershed – or at least what kind of swearing anyway.
Top Gear seems to be a pioneer of the BBC’s censorship around the watershed debate with badly dressed Clarkson remarking that certain people who drive certain cars deserve to be called certain things. Forums spruced up topics all over the web asking if Clarkson's controversial comments were appropriate for the supposed “family friendly” Top Gear which airs at 8pm ‘till 9 on BBC2.
Many people respond to the question with extremes, calling Clarkson a hilarious God of free speech or many of those opposing him, ironically, calling him the same rude terms he's used himself. Yet we’re now allowing words like “crap”, the odd “s***” or two in a drama and many of the commercial channels seemed to have kicked the can when it comes to caring about colloquial slips like “old b******”, “cheeky git” or “silly tit” – and so on.
Despite the vicious debates between viewers and a distressed OFCOM tearing their hair out over it all, as soon as the watershed mark is passed – currently standing at 9pm – all forms of censorship seem to get thrown in the water – bar the extremes.
If you pass 9pm you’ll get many comedy panel shows leisurely saying “s***” and finding comfort in calling their colleagues “a p****” as opposed to “a plonker”. So while the comedy folks are messing around, many of the chaps in their dramas and thrillers over the BBC and Commercial pass the watershed and throw in violence, bloodshed and much more – their language? Well, it’s a bit cleaner than most of the comedy but you do get the odd boldly-brutal-mouthed reality show or foul mouthed movie – especially if Danny Dyer seems to have got his mittens on it.
And many months ago, you’d have probably seen the casual use of the f-word right after the 9pm – quite literally in Gordon Ramsay’s diabolical C4 series of, well, The F-Word. However after the broadsheets latched on to the BBC’s sudden use of the more taboo swear words in our language, the broadcasters had no choice but to shun all the unedited f-words and w***** puns mostly passed 10 o’clock – a classic example being Mock the Week which used to air at 9pm when it included the notoriously crude, rude and frankly froooood Frankie Boyle; many may argue it was thanks to him it was knocked up the schedule to 10pm.
The watershed serves many services but with swear words becoming much more socially acceptable, is television in fact lagging behind? We may have those who aren’t accepting of the, how should I say, voluptuous variety of vile language – but the overwhelming majority of the new, younger generation are, surely? We can see that in BBC3, who seem to be disillusioned by the fact of ignoring the notion of a watershed will somehow gain their schedule of horse-faeces some resilient credibility. It won’t.
So what do you think?
Mrs Beryl Merkin's Note: Cheesing off your Parents
First written in October 2010 for Pie Magazine Publishing (C), republished to Pie Magazine UK 23/9/11, 10:52 GMT
I agreed to write this article at a BBQ - thank you Marks and Spencer's Snapper Cove Chardonnay (didn't sit too well on my pork belly bap I can tell you) - and I then had to think of a subject.
A subject I could sustain for more than one article. Problem-o, as the thick one from an episode of The Inbetweeners would say. But then, my beautiful, shiny bright, intelligent nephewtold me he was getting a tattoo as soon as he turns eighteen and his sister had shown me the one she'd had done. Suddenly, my subject came to me. Things to do to really cheese off your parents (aunts, godparents and other people older than you).
Here is my reasoning: I know you know that things things really cheese us adults off. That is why you do them; it is part of teenage rebellion and all that, a teenage version of throwing yourself on the floor and screaming because you can't have more Skips. So, I am thinking - if you know we know you know you only do stupid things to cheese us off, they will lose their power to shock because they are cliches and you won't - therefore - need to do them. Forget what this is called, post-modern irony or something.
Tattoos are no longer shocking, imaginative, arty, original or classy; and that is why it annoys adults when our darling babies get them. Everyone has a tattoo nowadays. Grandmas, shop managers, grammar schoolboys, your parents' friends, carpet fitters, underage single mothers - who'd want to be in gang with them? Hardly the wild bunch is it? Even Ozzy Osbourne - the original, illustrated man - said, "if you want to stand out, don't get a tattoo as every f***er has one nowadays" (or words to that effect). I once worked with an estate agent - yes, an estate agent - who had to wear a collar and a tie done up really high even when the temperature was in the eighties (you'll have to convert that to centigrade) because he had 'cut here' and a dotted line around his throat. Bet he was the coolest kid in reform school - now he is an estate agent sweating like a glass-blower's rear as the sun beats down on him in a client's garden because he can't wear an open-neck shirt.
And all the cod mythology that goes with them... "This Maori design which means protection; this Celtic symbol for motherhood; I have a great affinity with angels so I have wings on my back." What a steaming great pile of embarrassing horse odour. Just be warned by me, Mrs Beryl Merkin, you'll be cringing inside for decades to come. If I'd had a tattoo soon as I turned eighteen I'd currently be living with a French tricolore on my forearm and a portrait of Tom Hadley from Spandau Ballet on my inner thigh. I know this much is true.
A-Levels: Running Riot with Panic, "Can't be asked"s and Surprise
A-Level Results day is always a more subtle attraction than that of the large scale GCSE results day where the nation seems to go into mourning for much of the day over what alphabet has scarred their certificates after two years hard graft.
However, unlike GCSEs, A-Levels are not something which merely determine the foundations or your skills but are a key. They act as a key to an opportunity which wouldn’t exist if you didn’t have any; an opportunity which could determine the rest of your life. A-levels then, become more than exams – except to those can’t-be-asked-types, they’re the on/off switch.
The switch to what? Well, simply, higher education; the university life style that is craved for in the millions by young people in the UK and across the World. Even with the fees, the prospect of the experience university offers and its final prize – being the degree – still presents itself as a certainty for a lot of pupils.
It goes without saying that most of us will be pessimistic about getting our results – probably in an effort to deter any form of disappointment when you inevitably open them up. However, even those who don’t really care will always have a tiny glint of hope because, after all, this will always be your achievement. Peer pressure, friends, whatever, deep down it’s not as an important day as it is for you.
By the time you’ve read this, I’m sure this year’s A-Level pupils will know their results and already be fed-up of telling everyone the news – good or bad. However, here’s some food for thought and a little optimistic reassurance: in the end, you’re playing the ball game. You’re in control, if you want something, strive for it, if you don’t, then don’t. The Brits will always complain about the things they didn’t strive to do, but in the end, I just think that’s because we keep striving to do everything at once.
Good luck.
All you need to Know: Tuition Fees
[Submitted by Thomas West]
Great! More Tory bashing from a Nutty Northerner! - Err....no, not quite...
Recently, in the news, there has been a lot of attention to the changes in the maximum a university can charge for Tuition Fees, from around about £3,000 to £9,000 per... Read more...
Previous rants:
