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Pro-tax pro-poverty ‘charity’ Oxfam up to its usual tricks The left wing ‘charity’ Oxfam has staged a stunt in Westminster demanding the government collect more in taxes.
Please remember the next time you get the urge to go into one of their shops, or donate goods or money to Oxfam, that they are nothing less than a left wing advocacy group favouring poverty-inducing statist policies worldwide. These people work tirelessly to cause the misery (I believe they like to call it ‘fairness’) that they ostensibly exist to alleviate.
Do not assist the insatiable beast who wishes to devour the riches of others.
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Funny how Oxfam’s website says nothing about British politics. It has impassioned pleas for donations to help the victims of conflict and disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo, victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and those affected by floods in Northern Bangladesh. Scroll down to find out that
… but actually spent on 3 giant puppets so that Tarquin and Jemima from Primrose Hill can enjoy themselves posturing outside the House of Commons.
Correcting myself, I was wrong to say that there is nothing about British politics. Tucked away in corners there are lists of tweets including some about Tarquin and Jemima’s day out, and at the base of the page there is a drab looking link to “Issues we work on” that if followed mentions “Climate Change” and “Poverty in the UK”. Last.
In several places it mentions the factoid that “For every £1 you give to Oxfam, 82p goes directly to emergency, development and campaigning work” (Emphasis added.) I see no breakdown of how exactly that 82p is itself split between “emergency”, “development” and “campaigning.” I’d like to.
There’s a reason I prefer to give my relief money to the United Methodist Committee on Relief. Their donations are all for relief programs, and the overhead comes from general Church donations.
Otherwise, I’m not surprised at all.
I’d quite like to see a cut in corporation tax funded by the abolition of tax reliefs for charities. No doubt there are a few charities that are actually, er, charitable, but it’s needle in the haystack time. In theory, welfare would be better delivered by private charity than by the state itself, and that is, again in theory, a justification for granting privileged tax status to charities of the appropriate (ie state welfare substituting) kind. But in practice welfare-by-charity is a ship that has not merely sailed, but has sunk in mid ocean. So it’s not obvious to me that favouring tax exempt agitproppers demanding higher taxes on people who actually produce things for their fellow man is the way to improve the lot of the poor. Better to lower the taxes on the people who actually make stuff the poor want to buy.
An incidental benefit is that we would stop having to listen to the same agitproppers demanding the end to charity tax relief for private schools.
Agreed Perry.
I believe the late Ayn Rand called it “The Sanction Of The Victim”.
We may not be able to stop these evil folk taking money in taxes – but there is no need to give them money (which they will use for the collectivist political campaigning) on top of that.
As pointed out by a commenter at Guido’s, these hypocrites always nag their marks to include ‘gift aid’, thus favouring their own interests over the state. Much like someone who engages in
thefttax avoidance.Oxfam was founded in WW2 c.1942 by British upper middle class sanctimomious prigs as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, to campaign to hand food to the Germans to alleviate famine in Greece, regardless of the U-boat threat to Britain’s food and what the Nazis might have done with any food handed over. Bizarrely, the same prigs had ignored Stalin’s earlier famines, and even more oddly, they were not hanged for treason.
At the same time as Oxfam was being formed, nearby the High Wycombe Committee for Famine Relief was getting into its stride, before making a major contribution to eliminating a famine and one cause of famine. It is fair to say that this ‘Committee’ is better known to history as Bomber Command. Some former Bomber Command aircraft still fly through private charity, including the Bristol Blenheim, and an Avro Vulcan.
I have read references to the Oxfam HQ staff car park being rather densley populated with the less cheap marques of cars such as Mercs, BMWs etc. but I cannot find any pictures.
Funny you should mention Oxfam as they are members of this mob, 350.org who are actively campaigning for global fuel poverty 9well they call it stopping coal power generation)
Full list of supporters here. http://350.org/about/allies/
Also part of the Guardians divestment push for fossil fuels.
These people are actively promoting evil outcomes, they dont have good intentions, they are knowingly and willingly going to keep poor people in developing nations in fuel poverty.
So a hand operated pump for a village is ok, but not water to the house or electrically run infrastructure the members of Oxfam take for granted.
Evil, evil people.
“they are nothing less than a left wing advocacy group favouring poverty-inducing statist policies worldwide.”
Anyone who doesn’t know that already hasn’t been paying attention.
Should have gone to B & Q; buckets are only £1 each there.
Jake Haye
March 17, 2015 at 11:20 pm
As pointed out by a commenter at Guido’s, these hypocrites always nag their marks to include ‘gift aid’, thus favouring their own interests over the state. Much like someone who engages in theft tax avoidance.
Excellent point Jake, as are some of the others here. I get more in the way of information from reading comments at blogs like this than I ever did reading the papers. Brilliant.
Possibly Oxfam could give up its charitable status and thus be liable to pay tax like the rest of us.
Whenever I hear someone say taxes should be higher, I ask them to get their chequebook out there and then and write out a cheque to HMRC for whatever amount extra they feel they should pay.
My efforts on behalf of the state have so far proved fruitless.
mickc: You remind me of a dilemma that I am in with respect to the Church of England. Should I start a petition for the Church’s assets to be taxed on a basis like inheritance tax, with the tax falling at 40% on all assets bar actual churches (exempt as God’s principal private residence – to borrow a term from CGT – in each parish), but to ease the burden, it is levied in each See (Canterbury and York) upon the retirement or death of each Archbishop on all Church assets held in that see (or under the control of the Church Commissioners in that see, including intangible assets).
It is of course wrong to levy a new tax, but it would be interesting to see the Church’s arguments against it being taxed without it saying that it can do a better job than the State with its assets.
Has Oxfam yet admitted that direct aid, which it is famous for, is the worst thing in the medium and long-term for the development of society (it is quite useful in an actual food shortage…) as it develops dependency? I’ve met a fair few researchers into charity and international development, and they are generally not fans of the big charities, for all most of them are actually self-declared left wingers (but generally in that left-wing group which believes government might be the answer, but it should be local and democratic government).
There are plenty of good charities around which focus on micro-projects, such as providing water supplies or providing micro-loans, to help people develop autonomy and the time to be educated or run a business. Wateraid is one (or was – I am slightly concerned that they may have got so big that the leftish-charity types are taking over). So if you feel the need to donate money to help others on different continents live better and less dominated by corrupt kleptocrats and old clerics with beards, then I can recommend finding some of these. Not all charity is bad – but big centralised charities, like big centralised anything, tend to be.
A feature, not a bug – just as with welfare.
Many of the big charities like to portray their activities in terms of simple things individuals can use, such as buckets. They do this because this is what people will then think the money is used for. In reality, it’s an enormous global industry. The Oxfam shops you see on the high street don’t collect clothes which then get handed out to needy Africans by volunteers, they get bundled up wholesale and flogged to middle men who take them to Africa and sell them in bulk. This is why when you see pictures of refugees on rafts being hoiked out of the water by Italian coastguards, a lot of them are wearing Peter Andre t-shirts and the top half of a 1998 Arsenal away strip.
These sartorial disasters do not seem to put them off risking everything. Surely they can’t be an enticement?
I actually deeply regret not buying a Colonel Gaddafi T-shirt on my trip to the Western Sahara. That and the East German Border Guard uniform that a Grenztruppe Oberst was flogging at Checkpoint Charlie in August 1990, great for satirising lefties.
Lee Moore, March 17, 2015 at 7:51 pm
“I’d quite like to see a cut in corporation tax funded by the abolition of tax reliefs for charities.”
Raising taxes as a means to lowering taxes seldom works out as hoped. The anticipated cut to the coporation tax would simply get lost in the laundry.
For years I worked for a 3rd world relief charity that had one of the lowest overheads of any. We put tax breaks to good use in several ways. The primary business model was accepting (tax deductible) donations of medicine, medical supplies, and cleaning and sanitation supplies from businesses that were on the cusp of liquidating them (short-dated meds, discontinued products, etc). We used the (tax deductible) cash donations we received to sort, evaluate and distribute them. Through a very complicated inventory system we could assure that (for one example) short dated meds went to places where they were used before their expiration dates. Every country had different wait times for customs so it was not easy. We also kept track of which products were forbidden to go to which countries. For one example, anything containing sterilizing alcohol was strictly forbidden to go to Pakistan. Every kit that included alcohol swabs had to be opened and the sterilizing swab packets, etc removed if it was to go to Pakistan. Where possible we had volunteers doing that sort of work.
My preferred solution would be to not eliminate tax exemption (we should be reducing taxes every way we can – starve the beast) but to reduce the deduction to ‘charities’ according to how their money is spent. To build on what Natalie says March 17, 2015 at 5:26 pm, “I see no breakdown of how exactly that 82p is itself split between “emergency”, “development” and “campaigning.” I’d like to.”
Require itemization and reduce the deductibility of donations to those organization to exclude the portion of the donations spent on administration, overhead and advocacy. The organization I worked for would have had a very high percentage of cash gifts deductible due to our very efficient distribution system. Donations to other organization IE Oxfam would have far lower tax reduction value to donors because of all of the staff and facilities Oxfam and other dubious charities claim they need to do whatever it is that they claim to do.
Trouble is; my local Oxfam has a better selection of literature than the public library next door.
And perversely, Oxfam acquired the books in a much more noble fashion than the library did.
Ooh, that’s harsh, Snag!
“So a hand operated pump for a village is ok, but not water to the house or electrically run infrastructure the members of Oxfam take for granted.”
Which I agree with.
The Peace Corps did an astonishing amount of Socioeconomic damage with “giving” folks such things, and then, walking away.
The list of “unintended consequences” is fairly staggering.
Let’s see how they adapt to the “dynamics” of a hand (or foot) powered pump, at the well, where folks will STILL have to “interact” on a daily basis, figure out how to “spend” their new found spare time and “dependence” on (ie) pumped water, before simply dumping the “gift” of socio-political economic anonymity of sitting otherwise “unemployed” while such things are “magically” delivered on them,….until they AREN’T.
I COULD go into the inevitable fraud/crime/strife in “civilized” nations “free” housing/food/non-essential medical sectors…but…
*sheesh* …sitting idle at home, otherwise unemployed…
That’s an interesting point, CaptDMO.
I once did a module on Humanitarian Logistics; towards the end a chap from Oxfam came along to brief on the NGOs’ point of view (which seemed to be that they didn;t want anything to do with the military, regardless of how effective military personnel can be in crisis situations). in the Mess bar later, the academic who was running the module drew my attention to a fact htat had passed me by; the first thing our Oxfam friend told us about his organisation was not it’s aims, or how many lives it had saved or improved, but what it’s annual turnover was.
On proper charities: the RNLI and MSF spring to mind…
CaptDMO
Not a bad point, encouraging the “cargo cult” mentality if you dump the fruits of labour and research without the processes needed to create the “wealth” in the first place.
Well thought out.
The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief was formed in the 1940s and their first campaign was trying to persuade the Allies to allow shipments of food to Nazi-occupied Greece. At the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, no less. To coin a phrase, don’t you know there’s a war on?