Today I'm angry about.....

[Wandering Willy]

[TANGODANCER]

Relax Willy, he might not even appear on the pitch today...but then again....

[TANGODANCER]

Ooops...

[Wandering Willy]

Yep I'll be listening in to Radio SuperKnobwellyDavies.

fixed it for you Willy.

Refixed.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Minding my own business in the pub this afternoon and I get approached by three different blokes all with seperate individual agendas, but they are all the same. Now these are blokes I know, and are basically nice individuals, blokes who I can verify as being 'good eggs', but feck me, they and their like are now beginning to piss me off big style! It's a fad, a growing fad, and it needs to stop. What is it they're doing wrong? - they're asking me to pay for their f*cking holiday! OK so they say it's for charity, but actually it's not is it?
One is going to scale Kilimanjaro - not, note, in a record time, or backwards, or without legs, or doing it without eating or any other feckin challenge. Oh no he's just going to scale it and raise £1,000 in the process. For cancer. Now cancer is a bastard and I'd happily give him some money to combat it - but I will not give him some money so that some combination of ripoff merchants can organise a jolly for him and other multitudes to feck up the planet. Doesn't he realise how much a flight to East Africa costs , doesn't he get the environmental damage, is he a total feckin airhead, ffs!!!!"
No sooner had I sent him on his way with a flea in his ear than I get approached by another bloke who wants to cycle in Peru, and another who's going to ski in Antarctica. Feck Off. Stop It. Run to Scarborough and back, or just ask - YOU DON'T NEED TO CAMEL TREK IN OUTER FECKIN MONGOLIA TO RAISE A PISSY AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR SOME PISSY FECKIN CHARITY. Knobwellies all.

[Annoyed Grunt]

Bruce said the same a while back.......

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Bruce said the same a while back.......

I missed that, I think. Bruce was right.

[thebish]

Minding my own business in the pub this afternoon and I get approached by three different blokes all with seperate individual agendas, but they are all the same. Now these are blokes I know, and are basically nice individuals, blokes who I can verify as being 'good eggs', but feck me, they and their like are now beginning to piss me off big style! It's a fad, a growing fad, and it needs to stop. What is it they're doing wrong? - they're asking me to pay for their f*cking holiday! OK so they say it's for charity, but actually it's not is it?
One is going to scale Kilimanjaro - not, note, in a record time, or backwards, or without legs, or doing it without eating or any other feckin challenge. Oh no he's just going to scale it and raise £1,000 in the process. For cancer. Now cancer is a bastard and I'd happily give him some money to combat it - but I will not give him some money so that some combination of ripoff merchants can organise a jolly for him and other multitudes to feck up the planet. Doesn't he realise how much a flight to East Africa costs , doesn't he get the environmental damage, is he a total feckin airhead, ffs!!!!"
No sooner had I sent him on his way with a flea in his ear than I get approached by another bloke who wants to cycle in Peru, and another who's going to ski in Antarctica. Feck Off. Stop It. Run to Scarborough and back, or just ask - YOU DON'T NEED TO CAMEL TREK IN OUTER FECKIN MONGOLIA TO RAISE A PISSY AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR SOME PISSY FECKIN CHARITY. Knobwellies all.

amen!!!

[Prufrock]

x2

[Hoboh]

Guess no ones going to sponser my two weeks fighting the sun on a beach in Barbados then

[Montreal Wanderer]

Guess no ones going to sponser my two weeks fighting the sun on a beach in Barbados then

It might depend on the charity. Let's see. Hoboh's War of Poverty: Shoot as Many Indigent People as Possible. You might get a few sponsors...

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Minding my own business in the pub this afternoon and I get approached by three different blokes all with seperate individual agendas, but they are all the same. Now these are blokes I know, and are basically nice individuals, blokes who I can verify as being 'good eggs', but feck me, they and their like are now beginning to piss me off big style! It's a fad, a growing fad, and it needs to stop. What is it they're doing wrong? - they're asking me to pay for their f*cking holiday! OK so they say it's for charity, but actually it's not is it?
One is going to scale Kilimanjaro - not, note, in a record time, or backwards, or without legs, or doing it without eating or any other feckin challenge. Oh no he's just going to scale it and raise £1,000 in the process. For cancer. Now cancer is a bastard and I'd happily give him some money to combat it - but I will not give him some money so that some combination of ripoff merchants can organise a jolly for him and other multitudes to feck up the planet. Doesn't he realise how much a flight to East Africa costs , doesn't he get the environmental damage, is he a total feckin airhead, ffs!!!!"
No sooner had I sent him on his way with a flea in his ear than I get approached by another bloke who wants to cycle in Peru, and another who's going to ski in Antarctica. Feck Off. Stop It. Run to Scarborough and back, or just ask - YOU DON'T NEED TO CAMEL TREK IN OUTER FECKIN MONGOLIA TO RAISE A PISSY AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR SOME PISSY FECKIN CHARITY. Knobwellies all.

Indeed. I think I may have had a minor rant on this before. I can't be doing with it even when the individual is funding the actual trip himself/herself.

I know a lot of people have a very sincerely held charitable and altruistic instinct when they do a sponsored run/climb/skydive whatever, but I will never see the link between doing something that the individual finds enjoyable/a life enhancing challenge and charitable giving. Even in the most most genuine cases there is still an undercurrent of self aggrandisement and showing off. If you want me to contribute to your charity, persuade me of its merits, don't tell me how sporty/adventurous/zany you are along the way.

How many charitable runs did Jimmy Saville do?

[bobo the clown]

Yup ... well discussed before, but also very much worth refreshing & LLS's rant added to it. I pack all those "parachuting/sky-diving for charity" with it as well, though the latest trends are making them seem quite limp in ambition.

Can't comment on his recent experience but in mine the sheer amazement on their faces when you say "no", and the embarrassment you somehow feel for saying it is stunning.

It's also done within Companies. People approach the Company, sometimes with a link, often without, and do the same. That's somewhat less personal and less embarrassing but nonetheless.

I was watching a Save the Children TV ad. this weekend when some, seemingly pleasant, bint was explaining how she had been invited to go over to Zimbabwe and be filmed at some water project (let's not go into the basket case which is that fckg country).

The flights, films crew, production, planning, outcome & adverts on TV must have cost many £100k's. That's a lot of small donations. I'd be curious to the financial thinking beforehand.

[mrkint]

Minding my own business in the pub this afternoon and I get approached by three different blokes all with seperate individual agendas, but they are all the same. Now these are blokes I know, and are basically nice individuals, blokes who I can verify as being 'good eggs', but feck me, they and their like are now beginning to piss me off big style! It's a fad, a growing fad, and it needs to stop. What is it they're doing wrong? - they're asking me to pay for their f*cking holiday! OK so they say it's for charity, but actually it's not is it?
One is going to scale Kilimanjaro - not, note, in a record time, or backwards, or without legs, or doing it without eating or any other feckin challenge. Oh no he's just going to scale it and raise £1,000 in the process. For cancer. Now cancer is a bastard and I'd happily give him some money to combat it - but I will not give him some money so that some combination of ripoff merchants can organise a jolly for him and other multitudes to feck up the planet. Doesn't he realise how much a flight to East Africa costs , doesn't he get the environmental damage, is he a total feckin airhead, ffs!!!!"
No sooner had I sent him on his way with a flea in his ear than I get approached by another bloke who wants to cycle in Peru, and another who's going to ski in Antarctica. Feck Off. Stop It. Run to Scarborough and back, or just ask - YOU DON'T NEED TO CAMEL TREK IN OUTER FECKIN MONGOLIA TO RAISE A PISSY AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR SOME PISSY FECKIN CHARITY. Knobwellies all.

Indeed. I think I may have had a minor rant on this before. I can't be doing with it even when the individual is funding the actual trip himself/herself.

I know a lot of people have a very sincerely held charitable and altruistic instinct when they do a sponsored run/climb/skydive whatever, but I will never see the link between doing something that the individual finds enjoyable/a life enhancing challenge and charitable giving. Even in the most most genuine cases there is still an undercurrent of self aggrandisement and showing off. If you want me to contribute to your charity, persuade me of its merits, don't tell me how sporty/adventurous/zany you are along the way.

How many charitable runs did Jimmy Saville do?

I can see the worth in someone doing a long run or something like that. That takes effort/training/etc. Feck that bunjee-jumping skydiving shite, though.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

The first bloke, the one 'doing' Kilimanjaro is someone I know quite well. He's about nine years off retirement age, does sports such as biking and running on a casual basis, and is an acquaintance of mine with whom we have mutual friends. One of our mutual friends did a Lands End-John O'Groats bike ride to raise money last year and I sponsored him for £50 [but only because I know him, approved of the charity, and because I know how much effort he was putting it it. I, like most people, sponsor usually in the range of £1-£5, depending]. Anyway, Kilimanjaro man knew how much I'd sponsored LandsEnd man for, and when he came over to ask me to sponsor him his face was a picture when I said no. His face was a bigger and more telling picture when I explained why not and put an alternative to him - I said that if he didn't fly out to East Africa and actually donated the whole amount of the airfare to the charity then I'd double my LandsEnd donation to his charity. His face turned an acute puce as he waffled on about how it'd be cheating all his other sponsors because "they were expecting him to climb Kilimanjaro". When I pointed out that he'd so far raised the grand total of £16 that I'd also buy out those sponsorships into the bargain he was flummoxed but insisted it was a worthwhile cause and that he was pushing on with it (as though the effort was an enormous burden rather than the lark it actually is).

[Bruce Rioja]

His face turned an acute puce as he waffled on about how it'd be cheating all his other sponsors because "they were expecting him to climb Kilimanjaro". When I pointed out that he'd so far raised the grand total of £16 ....

I actually did an actual proper LOL then.

[Hoboh]

Minding my own business in the pub this afternoon and I get approached by three different blokes all with seperate individual agendas, but they are all the same. Now these are blokes I know, and are basically nice individuals, blokes who I can verify as being 'good eggs', but feck me, they and their like are now beginning to piss me off big style! It's a fad, a growing fad, and it needs to stop. What is it they're doing wrong? - they're asking me to pay for their f*cking holiday! OK so they say it's for charity, but actually it's not is it?
One is going to scale Kilimanjaro - not, note, in a record time, or backwards, or without legs, or doing it without eating or any other feckin challenge. Oh no he's just going to scale it and raise £1,000 in the process. For cancer. Now cancer is a bastard and I'd happily give him some money to combat it - but I will not give him some money so that some combination of ripoff merchants can organise a jolly for him and other multitudes to feck up the planet. Doesn't he realise how much a flight to East Africa costs , doesn't he get the environmental damage, is he a total feckin airhead, ffs!!!!"
No sooner had I sent him on his way with a flea in his ear than I get approached by another bloke who wants to cycle in Peru, and another who's going to ski in Antarctica. Feck Off. Stop It. Run to Scarborough and back, or just ask - YOU DON'T NEED TO CAMEL TREK IN OUTER FECKIN MONGOLIA TO RAISE A PISSY AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR SOME PISSY FECKIN CHARITY. Knobwellies all.

Indeed. I think I may have had a minor rant on this before. I can't be doing with it even when the individual is funding the actual trip himself/herself.

I know a lot of people have a very sincerely held charitable and altruistic instinct when they do a sponsored run/climb/skydive whatever, but I will never see the link between doing something that the individual finds enjoyable/a life enhancing challenge and charitable giving. Even in the most most genuine cases there is still an undercurrent of self aggrandisement and showing off. If you want me to contribute to your charity, persuade me of its merits, don't tell me how sporty/adventurous/zany you are along the way.

How many charitable runs did Jimmy Saville do?

I'm shocked at you of all people coming out with that! You inferring everyone who runs for charity is a paedophile? Very naughty mummy.

[Prufrock]

Minding my own business in the pub this afternoon and I get approached by three different blokes all with seperate individual agendas, but they are all the same. Now these are blokes I know, and are basically nice individuals, blokes who I can verify as being 'good eggs', but feck me, they and their like are now beginning to piss me off big style! It's a fad, a growing fad, and it needs to stop. What is it they're doing wrong? - they're asking me to pay for their f*cking holiday! OK so they say it's for charity, but actually it's not is it?
One is going to scale Kilimanjaro - not, note, in a record time, or backwards, or without legs, or doing it without eating or any other feckin challenge. Oh no he's just going to scale it and raise £1,000 in the process. For cancer. Now cancer is a bastard and I'd happily give him some money to combat it - but I will not give him some money so that some combination of ripoff merchants can organise a jolly for him and other multitudes to feck up the planet. Doesn't he realise how much a flight to East Africa costs , doesn't he get the environmental damage, is he a total feckin airhead, ffs!!!!"
No sooner had I sent him on his way with a flea in his ear than I get approached by another bloke who wants to cycle in Peru, and another who's going to ski in Antarctica. Feck Off. Stop It. Run to Scarborough and back, or just ask - YOU DON'T NEED TO CAMEL TREK IN OUTER FECKIN MONGOLIA TO RAISE A PISSY AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR SOME PISSY FECKIN CHARITY. Knobwellies all.

Indeed. I think I may have had a minor rant on this before. I can't be doing with it even when the individual is funding the actual trip himself/herself.

I know a lot of people have a very sincerely held charitable and altruistic instinct when they do a sponsored run/climb/skydive whatever, but I will never see the link between doing something that the individual finds enjoyable/a life enhancing challenge and charitable giving. Even in the most most genuine cases there is still an undercurrent of self aggrandisement and showing off. If you want me to contribute to your charity, persuade me of its merits, don't tell me how sporty/adventurous/zany you are along the way.

How many charitable runs did Jimmy Saville do?

I can see the worth in someone doing a long run or something like that. That takes effort/training/etc. Feck that bunjee-jumping skydiving shite, though.

If it's a cause worth supporting, it's a cause worth supporting. I'm perfectly happy to sponsor the marathon-y stuff where you'd do it anyway, it isn't taking a penny out of the donations and folk think, I'm doing this so I might as well raise money for a good cause while I'm at it. As soon as it comes to being an excuse for a jolly, they can feck off!

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

I can see the worth in someone doing a long run or something like that. That takes effort/training/etc. Feck that bunjee-jumping skydiving shite, though.

If somebody wants to put the effort and training in to do a long run, isn't it always because they fancy the personal achievement, health and fitness improvements and 'something to talk about' benefits associated with doing a marathon?

If it's a cause worth supporting, it's a cause worth supporting. I'm perfectly happy to sponsor the marathon-y stuff where you'd do it anyway, it isn't taking a penny out of the donations and folk think, I'm doing this so I might as well raise money for a good cause while I'm at it.

You see this is precisely the sort of vacuous, empty headed nonsense that I and others rail against. There are lots of things that people would 'do anyway' but they don't feel the need to say 'I might as well raise money for a good cause while I'm at it'.

If the cause is all important, then why not spend all that time training and effort on advocacy for the cause or even stacking shelves and paying the wages into the pot? I would sponsor that, but of course nobody does that because there is no personal glory attached.

If the cause is incidental to the activity, then it will not affect the likelihood of my sponsoring it, thanks.

If the activity has a genuine role to play in making a certain point, then that is different. A girl I worked with last year lived for a week on £1 a day for food, which was a genuine personal sacrifice that got us all thinking about the poverty charity she was raising money for (irrespective of the fact that living on £1 a day here is not really comparable to doing that in poor African countries). That is the only sponsored activity I have contributed to in recent memory.

[Prufrock]

I can see the worth in someone doing a long run or something like that. That takes effort/training/etc. Feck that bunjee-jumping skydiving shite, though.

If somebody wants to put the effort and training in to do a long run, isn't it always because they fancy the personal achievement, health and fitness improvements and 'something to talk about' benefits associated with doing a marathon?

If it's a cause worth supporting, it's a cause worth supporting. I'm perfectly happy to sponsor the marathon-y stuff where you'd do it anyway, it isn't taking a penny out of the donations and folk think, I'm doing this so I might as well raise money for a good cause while I'm at it.

You see this is precisely the sort of vacuous, empty headed nonsense that I and others rail against. There are lots of things that people would 'do anyway' but they don't feel the need to say 'I might as well raise money for a good cause while I'm at it'.

If the cause is all important, then why not spend all that time training and effort on advocacy for the cause or even stacking shelves and paying the wages into the pot? I would sponsor that, but of course nobody does that because there is no personal glory attached.

If the cause is incidental to the activity, then it will not affect the likelihood of my sponsoring it, thanks.

If the activity has a genuine role to play in making a certain point, then that is different. A girl I worked with last year lived for a week on £1 a day for food, which was a genuine personal sacrifice that got us all thinking about the poverty charity she was raising money for (irrespective of the fact that living on £1 a day here is not really comparable to doing that in poor African countries). That is the only sponsored activity I have contributed to in recent memory.

I wrote that quickly and it doesn't read properly. I meant,

"If it's a cause worth supporting, it's a cause worth supporting. (As in, if you want me to donate, convince me of the merits of this charity).

*Separate paragraph*

(However,) I'm perfectly happy to sponsor the marathon-y stuff where you'd do it anyway, it isn't taking a penny out of the donations and folk think, I'm doing this so I might as well raise money for a good cause while I'm at it. "

In the second sentence I'm referring to the GtEs of the world who genuinely would run a marathon anyway, and whilst they are at it might find it a good way to use it to frame a discussion about a charity close to them. I wouldn't sponsor GtE if he ran a marathon to raise money for a donkey sanctuary; but, I think if one of the runner folk had a charity close to his/her heart which I might consider, then running the marathon (which isn't taking any of the money donated) is actually a good way to kick off a discussion. I certainly think there is a difference between that sort of thing and 'pay for me to walk the great wall of China'.