Austerity and Charity
If you live in the United Kingdom in 2013 you will just be starting to understand ‘Austerity’. It’s a scary word because what Austerity means is that the politicians have run out of ideas. Well what I mean is, they’ve run out of sensible ideas. I mean they’ll spend 84 billion on Trident when it’s pretty clear we no longer have the means to maintain the submarines that are supposed to deliver it and we don’t really want to start a nuclear war. They’ll spend hundreds of millions on failed IT system after failed IT system to ‘root out’ fraudsters when it runs at 0.3% of all claims but they can’t do something as simple as lower VAT. They’ll pour hundreds of billions of quantitative easing into the pension funds and banks who will promptly pay bonuses and dividends with their tax funded windfall but they won’t give working households a tax rebate that they’d spend. Heating and food bills are on the up while incomes are on the way down, I’m no economist but even I can tell it’s going to get a whole lot worse yet under this government.
Austerity is a word that can freeze an economy in a state of limbo for years, some of this may start to sound a little too familiar for some, I know it sits badly with me. The swingeing welfare cuts have left many a family in a very precarious financial position and most of them are reining their spending in as much as possible.
I know people with 60k incomes in the household that have stopped spending on holidays, bikes, trikes and all the other stuff people tend to have about themselves for a bit of leisure time. There are families on one decent salary and a partner on benefits, bit like my own family who are finding it tough, I know its a struggle for us so those families that rely solely on benefits for whatever reason must really be feeling the pinch.
Banks are not lending, businesses are not hiring, exports are down and the economy is flatlining and employment is not a prospect for many young people, sadly they are doomed to a life of ‘ Apprenticeships’ on less than the minimum wage.A bleak outlook perhaps but a realistic one.
Unfortunately one of the first things most families have to give up is any charitable donations they may make, many make them by direct debit and those are normally the first a family drawing it’s spending in will cancel.
It’s not just the donations of cash that dry up either, Donations of time are harder to secure as less and less people are able to afford transport to and from doing volunteer work. Sadly this is already affecting the NABD to some extent and means that some of the volunteers and committee members are having to shoulder the extra burden.
Now some charities with multi-million pound turnovers with paid directors and staff never seem to be blighted by this but you need to ask yourself this one little question. If you are donating to a charity to help someone, be it with an adaption or help with the cost of specialist engineering like the NABD do or a research charity for a cure for some illness or disease, do you want any of your money used for lunches, salaries or company cars? I know I wouldn’t be happy seeing my money spent on anything other than the reason I donated it. It’s not really a charity if someone is making a fortune, driving flash ’company’ cars and flitting about first class on the transport and five stars over the door now is it?
It’s hard to be altruistic when you are worried about a roof over your head or feeding a family but if you do have a bit of spare cash to donate please think about where the money goes. The NABD is one of the few charities I’ve ever heard make the commitment that every penny donated goes where it should and in the case of the NABD it goes on adaptions for riders with a disability.
All of the other running expenses of the NABD ( www.nabd.org.uk )are drawn from monies made at fundraising events. As some of you may know the NABD is run by a committee of unpaid volunteers and employs only two office staff to deal with charity administration.
The Association does not do hotels or lunches, we don’t do flash cars or fat cat salaries! Everyone does it for the love of the work and the craic at the rallies and fundraising events. Some charities will cover reasonable fuel costs but some folk can’t even afford to lay it out in the first place so again the charity suffers.
Austerity will push many small and medium sized charities to the wall over the next few years and they are the ones that need your support not those run by people who have their salary first and foremost in their minds every time a donation hits the mat.
It’s a tough environment out there but bikers being bikers most of our members will give what they can when they can and the NABD will continue to be the leading charity of it’s kind in the world. Volunteers and committee member will come and go as years pass but I know that because there will always be people who do things simply because they are the right thing to do charities like the NABD will always survive because the unpaid volunteers have their eye on the job not the fat cat bonuses. Pride before profit, you’ll never be rich but you’ll be able to hold your head up high and look the world in the eye knowing you did your bit.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down!
Gaz
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