Maybe I have a new contender for the "four words that made me the most hated man in the room"? Children in Need sucks. Surely that has to be a winner. But it is also true at almost every level and that is why I don't give it a cent and urge all others to boycott it too.
Last night's effort has so far raised £46 million and I guess that by the time it is all over that number will be a record £50 million plus. We are told that "every penny goes to Children in Need" but does every penny go to children in need? No. The CEO of this body, which employs c100 well paid Guardian readers, earns £360,000 a year. In the year to June 30 2015 CIN spent £62 million but only £55 million of that went on grants to children in need the rest was on admin costs. And one wonders how much of the £55 million handed out went on admin costs at various charities and how much actually went on children in need (lower case).
It is all very well the BBC saying that admin costs at CIN are well under those for the (bloated) charity sector as a whole but CIN does not actually do any charity itself it just doshes out cash to others so it is comparing apples with pears.
Moreover I bitterly resent folks who are worth tens of millions of pounds such as Eddie Redmayne and Britney Spears, earning brownie points by "giving their time" to CIN where they then sanctominiously suggest to poor people that they need to hand over their cash. How about if all the celebs who appeared last night tithed their income to CIN. They would not notice the difference and CIN would be rolling in it.
Britain is drowning in Charities nearly all of which duplicate the work of many other charities and nearly all of which are burdened with a cost base that cannot be justified. Children In Need is just another layer of that management overhead. A bonfire of the Charities would mean more money going to actual children in need and other good causes. If we are looking for some charity fat cats to be the first to walk the plank Children In Need is a great place to start.