Sick and tired of charities asking for money to look after the poor in society.

Children in Need to help disadvantaged children in the UK WTF.

No it is a way of helping fooking tories and Liberals who have cut benefits, implemented regressive taxes to satiate their guilt by throwing a few shekels at the poor.

If you voted for and support all the cuts in the name of budget reduction and hoping to get a few quid in tax reductions as bribe before the next election you have no right to complain about failing services and the consequences of that. You have no right to complain about waiting times in A and E and dead children starved to death BECAUSE you are RESPONSIBLE.

Children in Need are children in need of a change in the political culture of this country to stop children being in need in the first place.

Lets watch some telly donate a tenner and then we can forget all about what is happening to the children in Britain for the next year.

Dont give in to emotional taxation make the rich pay for it.

Sod children in need and point out the hypocrisy of what it is all about. Tories giving money to look like they care

I do find it odd that Children in Need is a lot of mostly very rich people doing stuff on stage on the night urging the less well off to give from their much smaller income/savings.

I have always found rich people urging the population at large to donate patronising.

Charity and the need for it to the extent we do need it in 2013 is an interesting question.

Ordinary people doing daft things to raise money is a completely different thing but of course in an ideal world charity should be for non-essential things like various animal charities. Not for funding things like relief for young carers.

But then if we funded that from taxes we would no doubt have some idiots asking why was that essential?

The fact there are young carers in need of charity to give them relief is a double whammy in that it shows we aren't meeting the needs of the adult requiring care in the first place so I agree with what you are saying in general.

Charity ought to be something the Victorians did, not us.

I blame Bob Geldof.

Do as my family do - nominate one charity to give your support to, sign a direct debit for a few quid a month and then sit back with an easy conscience and when anyone shakes a collecting tin in your face just smile and say "No thank you" with no further explanation required.

Our current charity of choice for the monthly DD is Dogs Trust with an annual bike ride for our local hospice done by me and a gang of mates in memory of one of our gang who spent his final three weeks there.

I've done my bit, they can shove BBC1 tonight ...

Lovely idea.

In the meantime, what do you suggest those same children actually eat while we're all 'making the rich pay' (by methods that you don't seem to have detailed). Your words?

The Red Cross is giving out food parcels in the UK and Save the Children is spending money here for the first time. Will you also be telling people, globally, not to donate to these?

Would the deaths of a few starved infants help, do you think? And if so, how many?

Mind, if you want emotional blackmail, I suggest that rl'cause marketing' is far worserl: 'Ooo, buy these nappies and we'll donate a tetanus jab to Unicef', while the other type means that some organisations put themself into a position of a conflict of interest at best.

The best thing would be if ALL people assets at death or held within 7 years of death went directly to charities of their choice, rather than to their kids or to HMRC in inheritance tax (wgere applicable). That way charities would be well funded, people would give back to the society that offered them the opportunity to accumulate wealth and we'd do away with the moral abomination of inherited wealth.

You will not be leaving anything to your kids then?

You obviously do not have children!!

Why don't we all donate our whole earnings to the government and they can give us back a little pocket money and then divi up the rest as they feel fit? That way none of can complain - isn't that what you want?

Well for starters, the unions are there, trying to do something, but shackled by vast amounts of legislation, fear among members and a blackout from most media unless it's a negative story.

Why not save that speech for people other than those on the Sin Bin? Perhaps set up a soapbox in your local shopping centre this morning to tell people, instead of asking where everybody else is?

Maybe you could join me ?

I'll check back, but I don't appear to be the one demanding to know what everybody else is doing about the situation - and assuming that nobody is doing anything is implicit in that.

I never doubted that people are doing something but it needs more. The point i made in my second post is that too many working class people are struggling to survive so it is upto the enlightened Middle calss to take the lead oin the ideological battle.

Please point me in the direction of the i[sizemportant and influential[/size artists, filmakers, dramatists poets singers and writers who are challenging the mainstream view and making waves
what i would give for the new Ken Loach, Caryl Churchill, alan bleasdale etc

I had the misfortune of my finger slipping on the remote control at the half-time point of the NZ/Scotland quarter.
i was greeted by Mother Cheryl of Newcastle and after wretching hurriedly turned back.

I'll point you in this direction ... rlhttp://www.channel5.com/shows/on-benefits-proud/episodes/on-benefits-proudrl, Channel 5's "documentary" on the unemployed and how much they take in benefits and the lives they lead at taxpayers expense.

I won't mince words - its a fookin disgrace.

But not for the reasons you may think.

The documentary makers from the 1960s and 70s that you speak of presented social issues to an ignorant public and made a difference, they made the ignorant sit up and take notice, they made the politicians sit up and take notice and eventually some good came of it, some social changes were made because the majority watched and said "this is not right".

What is happening now is that documentary makers go for the shock factor but for the titillation, the scorning disdain of a middle class who read the tabloids and believe that there is a scum lower class who take thousands of pounds in benefits from their hard earned taxes and waste it all on getting drunk, getting high, and sleeping all day long while their 42" 3D TV sets play Jeremy Kyle all day long in the corner.

If you missed the Ch5 offering have a look on catch up and ask yourself while you are watching it if the two families that were chosen as the subjects are GENUINELY representative of the unemployed, stand in front of a mirror and look at yourself and ASK yourself if you really believe that the 2 million plus unemployed ALL behave in this way.

And when you have honestly answered yourself, then ask yourself who commissioned that documentary and dozens like it and what was the brief to the director and who gave the director the brief, and for why.

If it was for pure entertainment then we can bin the "documentary" as being as educational and informative as "Made in Chelsea" or "Geordie SHore", ie completely irrelevant, if it was intended as education then it was a disgraceful use of propoganda the likes of which has not been seen since the 1930s when the Nazi party presented their "Jew-hating" films to cinema patrons.

THATS what has happened to your documentary makers.