A good day to bury bad priorities

Today the government is expected to announce continuing benefit freezes and tax cuts. On Friday Comic Relief will be asking us to donate to projects which deal with poverty and financial hardship, homelessness, mental illness, and providing hope and a future for young people.

I wonder if these 2 things are, in any way, related?

If the government is officially outsourcing the welfare state to the charitable sector, I'd rather they came out and said it rather than did it by stealth.

UK Generosity Hotspots. Don't come South looking for charity.....

Sheffield is the most generous city in the UK. The city that gave the world cutlery, the Human League, Michael Vaughan, Jessica Ennis, and, um Nick Clegg MP. That's according to some research by a biscuit company, so it must be true.  It looks from the map as though people get stingier the further South and West they are. I was raised in Sheffield but now live in Yeovil; do the maths, but you're wasting your time asking me for a cuppa. I'm joking of course.

But its nice to see that a bit of basic civility and kindness is alive and well, in the North anyway.

‘In many situations, people get more of a buzz out of extending the hand of generosity to others than they do when being a recipient of the gesture themselves.’ said the neuropsychologist who did the research. 'It is more blessed to give than to receive', said Jesus a few years earlier. 

Ht Metro

Flash the 'Tache, Raise some Cash

What with all this excitement, I kind of lost track of things myself, but we are now 4 days into Movember, the mens health awareness campaign. I've already violated rule 1, but with the resurgence of the beard for some of us it will be Shavember before it becomes Movember. The charity prioritises prostate and testicular cancer and mens mental health.

If you're already caused out, what with world mental health day, Children in Need, Remembrance Day, making up a Shoebox for operation Christmas child etc., then just give a friendly nod to anyone who turns up at work this month looking like a dropout from the Village People.