I almost found myself agreeing with Sean O’Grady…
Like the Notting Hill Carnival, royal jubilees and weddings, Red Nose Day and Children in Need (or “Children in Greed”, as the cynical sods in the BBC newsroom used to resentfully label it) it represents the worst kind of forced semi-official mandated jollity. It’s almost North Korean in its bogusness. So we’re all supposed to feel so grateful about getting an extra bank holiday or a paragraph in the local paper that we’re pathetically willing to spend all night on the Mall or spend the day sitting in a bath of baked beans for a few measly quid in donations, basically begging.
I’ve said something similar myself on a number of occasions. However, O’Grady has a solution…
There are lots of subsidiary reasons to want the whole thing to be scrapped. Like the fact that if they really wanted to raise some cash most of these runners would just get their rich mates to write a really big cheque. Apparently the whole thing has raised £450m for charity since 1981, but that is sod all in fiscal terms – for example, what the state spends on the NHS and other public services, overseas aid and the like. All those runners and sponsors would do more for the poor and needy if they put their trainers away and voted Labour. But that would cost them a lot more in tax and they’d feel miles less smug.
Ah, yeah, the old MOAR TAX! solution. Fuck off already. We do not need more tax. We do not need; and should not have; the state taking money by force and giving it to charities. Much as I dislike these smugfests, they are infinitely preferable to the state stealing our money and giving it to charities that we may not support. At least people who give money at these events are volunteers. Huge fucking difference. I choose to ignore it, not watch and not give. I don’t get that choice when the taxman calls.
There are those of us who enjoy the challenge of running a marathon and, as the London Marathon is a really big one with a really brilliant atmosphere, would quite like to have a go at that one. If you belong to a running club a handful of entries will be made available for members, otherwise you have to apply and then you have a remote chance of getting a place. Didn’t get in again this year? Not to worry, lots of charities have had places allocated to them so if you raise say £1,500 you can have a place. So handing over a wad of cash, or conning friends and workmates into doing so, is a way of buying your way to the front of the queue. A scam is what I think this is known as.
As for voting Labour being a better idea, well words fail me. If these socialist parties are actually capable of creating the problem free utopia that they always promise, how come they always do the precise opposite? How do the O’Gradys of this world not notice this abysmal track record of failure.