Hopefully I recently pumped a little entertainment into all your faces by detailling a harrowing night sat in front of Children in Need which, 5 minutes of jiggling newsreaders aside, basically amounted to nearly a third of day’s worth of light entertainment attrocities scorching themselves on my retinas- a bit like the aversion therapy Alex undergoes in Clockwork Orange only with more John Barrowman.
Well, not content with that particular evening, charities all over the place have been going out of their ways to grind all the goodness and humanity out of my core and replace them with a yawning, gaping wound that wouldn’t look out of place in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.
First of all, those new fangled charity collectors seem to be back in even greater numbers to clog up the streets of town and city centres and try to corner unsuspecting people into giving them their bank details for a £5 a month donation of which the collectors themselves probably take a good £4.50 home with them to spend on ridiculous haircuts (the male ones) or stupid facial jewellry (the female ones).
They’ve also got smarter too and started working in packs of three or more to shuttle oblivious members of the public down blind alleys until they have no choice but to make eye contact and engage these people in conversation. At which point they’re hoping traditional British sensibilities kick in and instead of being nasty to someone’s face the luckless prole will then stump up the number off their debit card and more tattoos (the male ones) and hair dye (the female ones) can be bought on the commission. They’re like velociraptors in bibs.
At least we can say that in some respects charities are getting more cunning in some respects with their attempts at raising money because, in another way, they’ve got fantastically fucking dumb.
This weekend, if anyone plays recent X-Box 360 shoot-fest sensation ‘Call of Duty- Modern Warfare 2′on X-Box Live (which is essentially Facebook for sociopaths) then the imaginatively monikered game shop ‘Game’ will make a donation to the charity Warchild which- clue in the title- aims to help children who’s lives have been shattered by the grim realities of armed conflict in countries where it’s a harrowing daily reality and not an excuse to fire up an X-Station Zebra and get some ‘frags’ or something.
Let’s explore this in a little more detail making reference to evidence from which to deduce reasoned conclusions. A bit like a dissertation except with the word ‘fannies’ in the 7th paragraph. The money from this ‘Game for Good’ event is being raised for ‘Warchild’ who describe their noble mission as ‘to support and strengthen the protective environment for children who, as a result of conflict, live with a combination of insecurity, poverty and exclusion’. The money is being raised by Game encouraging people to ‘strap on the frags, pull on the kevlar and lock and load the M4′
For those of you to whom this isn’t clear- what is basically taking place this weekend is the equivalent of raising money for the Princess Diana Memorial Fund by having a virtual rally through Parisian underpasses. I don’t want to pour scorn on what is obviously an attempt to raise much-needed money for a very worthy cause but wouldn’t it be more fitting to do it by encouraging people not to run around cyberspace pretending to shoot their friend to death? Maybe donations can be accumulated by having gamers enter death match arenas and then just wandering around chatting to each other and handing each other small gifts like a Kinder Egg or something. Or change half the players into war orphans and half into desperate infertile parents and having them search for each other till everyone’s paired up and living happily ever after. The best players on the planet could even get some power-ups and play as Madonna.
I honestly didn’t mean this to turn into a cri de coeur against the idea of donating to charities but it’s obviously how I feel right now. A student was recently telling me how they’re i-Pod was a special ‘anti AIDS’ edition for which £50 of the purchase price was given to Aids charities. And guess how much more than the usual retail price for an i-Pod it cost.
Right.
It’s much like ‘Fairtrade’ products in shops which aim to demonstrate how the company supplying it is being caring, sharing and humanitarian by offering more money to the original farmers and producers when in fact, all they do, is shunt up the retail price and get us to pay it instead. We can feel good about ourselves, the little people get more money and the company gets all the credit despite just labelling some of their produce ‘Fairtrade’ and instantly implying that everything else that they do is based on exploiting the people at the start of the supply chain and then flogging it to us as cheaply as possible. They’ll be nice once in a while to the farmers, but only if we’re the ones willing to pay for it.
Just as we’re the ones being cornered on the high street by idiots in tabards because we can’t be trusted to be nice without being tricked into it. Just as we’re the ones who will happily give money to Warchild provided we can do it by pretending to wage war against our best friends. Just as we’re the ones who can only make a concerted effort to raise money for children who need it if we’re promised a night of Eastenders musical specials and John bloody Barrowman.
God this planet’s fucked.
Hopefully I recently pumped a little entertainment into all your faces by detailling a harrowing night sat in front of Children in Need which, 5 minutes of jiggling newsreaders aside, basically amounted to nearly a third of day’s worth of light entertainment attrocities scorching themselves on my retinas- a bit like the aversion therapy Alex undergoes in Clockwork Orange only with more John Barrowman.
Well, not content with that particular evening, charities all over the place have been going out of their ways to grind all the goodness and humanity out of my core and replace them with a yawning, gaping wound that wouldn’t look out of place in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.
First of all, those new fangled charity collectors seem to be back in even greater numbers to clog up the streets of town and city centres and try to corner unsuspecting people into giving them their bank details for a £5 a month donation of which the collectors themselves probably take a good £4.50 home with them to spend on ridiculous haircuts (the male ones) or stupid facial jewellry (the female ones).
They’ve also got smarter too and started working in packs of three or more to shuttle oblivious members of the public down blind alleys until they have no choice but to make eye contact and engage these people in conversation. At which point they’re hoping traditional British sensibilities kick in and instead of being nasty to someone’s face the luckless prole will then stump up the number off their debit card and more tattoos (the male ones) and hair dye (the female ones) can be bought on the commission. They’re like velociraptors in bibs.
At least we can say that in some respects charities are getting more cunning with their attempts at raising money because, in another way, they’ve got fantastically fucking dumb.
This weekend, if anyone plays recent X-Box 360 shoot-fest sensation ‘Call of Duty- Modern Warfare 2′on X-Box Live (which is essentially Facebook for sociopaths) then the imaginatively monikered game shop ‘Game’ will make a donation to the charity Warchild which- clue in the title- aims to help children who’s lives have been shattered by the grim realities of armed conflict in countries where it’s a harrowing daily reality and not an excuse to fire up an X-Station Zebra and get some ‘frags’ or something.
Let’s explore this in a little more detail making reference to evidence from which to deduce reasoned conclusions. A bit like a dissertation except with the word ‘fannies’ in the 7th paragraph. The money from this ‘Game for Good’ event is being raised for ‘Warchild’ who describe their noble mission as ‘to support and strengthen the protective environment for children who, as a result of conflict, live with a combination of insecurity, poverty and exclusion’. The money is being raised by Game encouraging people to ‘strap on the frags, pull on the kevlar and lock and load the M4′.
For those of you to whom this isn’t clear- what is basically taking place this weekend is the equivalent of raising money for the Princess Diana Memorial Fund by having a virtual rally through Parisian underpasses. I don’t want to pour scorn on what is obviously an attempt to raise much-needed money for a very worthy cause but wouldn’t it be more fitting to do it by encouraging people not to run around cyberspace pretending to shoot their friend to death? Maybe donations can be accumulated by having gamers enter death match arenas and then just wandering around chatting to each other and handing each other small gifts like a Kinder Egg or something. Or change half the players into war orphans and half into desperate infertile parents and having them search for each other till everyone’s paired up and living happily ever after. The best players on the planet could even get some power-ups and play as Madonna.
I honestly didn’t mean this to turn into a cri de coeur against the idea of donating to charities but it’s obviously how I feel right now. A student was recently telling me how they’re i-Pod was a special ‘anti AIDS’ edition for which £50 of the purchase price was given to Aids charities. And guess how much more than the usual retail price for an i-Pod it cost.
Right.
It’s much like ‘Fairtrade’ products in shops which aim to demonstrate how the company supplying it is being caring, sharing and humanitarian by offering more money to the original farmers and producers when in fact, all they do, is shunt up the retail price and get us to pay it instead. We can feel good about ourselves, the little people get more money and the company gets all the credit despite just labelling some of their produce ‘Fairtrade’ and instantly implying that everything else that they do is based on exploiting the people at the start of the supply chain and then flogging it to us as cheaply as possible. They’ll be nice once in a while to the farmers, but only if we’re the ones willing to pay for it.
Just as we’re the ones being cornered on the high street by idiots in tabards because we can’t be trusted to be nice without being tricked into it. Just as we’re the ones who will happily give money to Warchild provided we can do it by pretending to wage war against our best friends. Just as we’re the ones who can only make a concerted effort to raise money for children who need it if we’re promised a night of Eastenders musical specials and John bloody Barrowman.
God this planet’s fucked.
