To say that some charities shouldn’t exist?

[YourJadeSeal]

Shouldn’t governments take responsibility for things like homelessness and food banks instead of relying on charity?

So depressing isn't it ? Wake me up when this government is over.

No, the government should fund essential publiccservices and charities are there to do things that government doesn’t want to do. I agree though that people shouldn’t have to rely on charities to feed their kids.

When I grew up, in a northern European country, charity was almost a dirty word, and a concept which was broadly agreed to be synonymous with a government's dereliction of duty. There were no charities serving domestic needs such as homelessness or hospices or mental health services at all, as these were funded by the state. Some people would make donations to international organisations such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Save the Children or Médecins Sans Frontières, but nationally? No need.

I'm not surprised there is such a wide range of charities operating in the UK: austerity and Conservative governments have eroded social safety-nets, and people have a thing about some cohorts of the populace being less deserving than others of support, hence they like to pick and choose to whom their donated pounds and volunteering hours benefit, as opposed to considering paying slightly higher taxes for better services all around. I've never understood it.

You're right. Hospice and cancer care is another good example. Of course, care for dying and seriously ill people should be entirely paid for the by the state!

As others have said it depends if you want a high tax large state (labour) or a low tax small state (tory), The problem is most people actually seem to want low tax, large state (impossible). In theory a low tax economy means that the country picks up the gaps and supports hence why food banks are entirely compatible with a conservative government.

Of course government should fund some charities. Not food banks because Everyone should have enough in benefits to eat/have a home etc from their benefits if they qualify for them. Rent for social housing should be affordable and there should be more stock. Private renting would ideally be a choice not necessity.
RNLI shouldn’t have to rely on charity. It’s an emergency service. That’s the first charity I’d like the government to fund.

I thought this would be about how many corrupt charities there are. They should definitely be gone.

Until we have a perfect government we need the charities.

I think it’s appalling that private schools are registered charities though. What a load of shit

You know what's even worse and bloody infuriating is all the private hedge funds and investors profiting from children in care...glad the government is doing something about it and hope it makes a positive difference to our most vulnerable children.

Agree and the air ambulance.

@EvilsElsasPetSnowman in the same way as universities/churches are ie this means that they cannot operate for profit, and must show that they are creating public benefit.

Pretty sure Henning Wehn said it best: "We don't do charity in Germany. We pay taxes."

RNLI actively does not want to be run by the government.

That's a whole emergency service that prefers independence

@Arlanymor yes. air ambulance agree. They do amazing work. We used to live in Scotland and they are nationally funded there. I forgot they are not here.

This.

I work for a charity but completely agree with you OP. We are over-reliant on the goodwill of people to volunteer and donate. Most volunteers (in my organisation at least) traditionally have been retired women who want to keep busy and give something back. But fewer and fewer people are finding themselves in that position as they need to keep working, look after grandchildren, or just don't want to deal with the increasing complexity of the circumstances our service users face. And I don't blame them.

It's a disgrace that so many children live in poverty and charities on inadequate, short-term contracts are expected to deal with it. We keep trying our best but it isn't sustainable.

Sadly not nationally funded in Wales and I am part of a campaign group to change that when we have our Senedd election in 2026. They are awesome. And we need them in a country of massive rurality. Glad that Scotland got the memo on this one and have prioritised it.

Tax is not theft, everyone should be paying their share, but the burden is massive at the moment.

There are many people who are not contributing as they should (rich and poor) and the people in the middle are having to stretch themselves to do so.
(I suspect you’re one of the takers rather than the givers),
HMRC are cracking down on people taking the piss, but it’s going to take time.

Well yes, but there’s a difference between being funded and being managed. They could be given an endowment. Total flexibility that way.

Food banks require food to be moved away from the traditional easy to get to location and into separate storage facilities where naice people get a volunteer or paid position to hand out to the worthy poor.

A system of managing food issues via some other supermarket based system would be better in logistics terms.

Food banks don't trust poor people to spend money on food themselves.

They also avoid the whole issue of dependency on support without educating people to be self sufficient and get debt issues resolved.

Of course! But the Tory's were completely useless and only care about money for themselves and their mates. Labour aren't a hec of a lot better. So here we are! ...

Actually, although in theory they shouldn't have to exist, I think it's a rather nice idea to have a community that cares about its own, rather than just doing nothing and letting a government deal with it.

And to be fair, some people are utterly hopeless with money and budgeting so are very grateful for foodbanks when they run out!

The Government pile tons of money into homelessness and food bank provision. Don't forget at the top of every big charity there is a chief executive taking a bloody big salary so they aren't going anywhere.....

But it's a relatively recent phenomenon. We've always had Salvation Army etc but food banks I've not always been around. I remember them in the 1980s with miners' strike where people put food in for the miners but they didn't exist before or after that. I think it's really really shocking that we need to have food banks.

If you understood the people most in need of food banks you would understand why a proportion of them cannot be trusted to spend money on food, and why this group of people have spoiled it for the majority.

I remember when healthy eating vouchers came in and on here the discussions were around how people could work the system in their favour so they could buy non essential items. If you hand out money some will be responsible but others would rather starve.

I remember arguments like this when the national lottery was set up, shouldn't the government have been funding the things the NL were going to fund. It just gave an excuse for the government to reduce funding even more for things the NL were involved with.