Charities’ fundraising methods have become morally corrupt

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/may/24/letters-charity-fundraising-morally-bankrupt

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The sad death of Olive Cooke, highlighted by Lucy Siegle (“For Olive’s sake, charities must be less brutal”, Comment), certainly resonated with me.

For several years, I have been waging a battle against the telephone calls, mail shots and cold callers pestering my very elderly, slightly confused mother. Even signing her up to the telephone and mailing preference services, sticking “no cold caller” signs on her front door, making her telephone number ex-directory and having a phone that will not take calls from undisclosed numbers does not stem the flow of requests.

However, it’s the door-to-door charity agents who really make me very angry. Last year, I had lengthy email and telephone contact with one agency about the fact that it totally ignored the “no cold callers stickers”, ignored the fact that my mother was obviously very old and confused and put pressure on her to sign up. Apparently, she needs yet another sticker expressly requesting charities not to call.

I fully understand that charities need be inventive in increasing donations, but the methods now employed seem to me to be morally corrupt.

Name and address supplied

Expectations are too great

I believe that Princess Charlotte was exposed to the abuse of public expectation from the very start of life (“Being born a royal is a sophisticated form of child abuse”, Comment). At just a few hours old, Charlotte slept through her first press photocall. But to see her mother, the Duchess of Cambridge, with immaculate hair and makeup, arrayed in smart dress and vertiginous heels on the steps of the Lindo Wing only hours after childbirth, was a form of abuse all its own. So, with regard to the line “assuming her parents are not opponents of royalification”, I doubt that for Charlotte anything will change.

A shift in public expectation would go a long way to help – and it should begin with making sure that a woman who has just given birth does not feel the need to call on a stylist and hairdresser to feel presentable.

Margaret Healion

Dublin

When jazz was hot in Soho

The extract from George Melly’s piece from the 1960s (Soho Stories, New Review) does not do justice to the significance played by Soho in the traditional jazz craze starting in the late 1950s.

For someone in their late teens, as I was then, Soho was a magnet. We frequently hitched down from Stoke-on-Trent on Saturday mornings for the all-night sessions at the Ken Colyer Club, then hitched home early on Sunday morning. Soho was a trad jazz mecca. Rare LPs could be found at Doug Dobell’s record shop in Charing Cross Road; the Cy Laurie Club was opposite the Windmill; Bilk, Brown and Barber were central to the scene.

It was a craze that may have lasted a decade and all, I feel, enjoyed it in complete safety – or at least, that’s what we thought. The girls were still very much part of the scene in those days, and many of us provincial lads could only dream of such pleasures. The period is still occasionally recreated at lunchtimes at the Spice of Life bar in Cambridge Circus. Trad is played to a usually full house in the cellar, as befits the music. Indeed, some of the patrons look as though they could well have been there 50 years ago. You can take the boy out of Soho, but you can never take Soho out of the man!

David Handley

Gargrave, North Yorkshire

Don’t lose the plot

Your article on the threats looming over Britain’s allotments is timely(“Losing the plot: the fight is on to save our green and pleasant allotments”, News).

Here in Bristol, Stapleton allotments are losing more than half of their plots to make room for a bus bridge for the new (ungreen) MetroBus. The plot holders are being relocated, but the land lost is irreplaceable. As I write, ancient trees and hedgerows are being felled during the nesting season. The citizens of Bristol have protested about the route for the bus, which shaves a mere three and a half minutes off journey times and which could be achieved by an alternative viable route.

The irony of the decision by our council and a big business consortium to concrete over acres of wildlife habitat and food-growing areas while Bristol is European Green Capital is not lost on us. The planning hearing was seriously flawed, legitimate protests were ignored and a six-week “sit-in” was ended at vast public expense by turning the site into something resembling a prison camp, with guards, fences and lights. 

This could happen anywhere. People cannot afford to go through the legal system to oppose such plans. So climb those trees and save your plots if you have to, allotmenteers!

Jane Ghosh

Secretary, Stapleton allotments, Bristol

A new chapter? Hardly

In his praise of the “magnficent Central Library” (“The View From… Manchester”, Comment), Sir Richard Leese might have mentioned that in the refurbishment 150,000 books were lost, together with the very popular Library Theatre. Some of us see the problems of building for the future as more complex than Sir Richard’s enthusiasm suggests.

Alan Shelston 

Altrincham