I have tried a dozen different ways to communicate with you and failed to get the message through that you have stopped giving me access to my accounts, you continued to send threatening emails demanding money I have been paying.
I informed you some time ago I no longer wanted to receive any 'service' from you and proposed to cancel my ransom payments of £5 a month. Today you send me a demand for £25. You cannot be serious.
Save the Children turned down a donation of £750,000 to help Ukranian refugees because it came from a North Sea gas producer. As a result I have cancelled my monthly standing order and sent the following email:
I wanted you to know that I have today cancelled my monthly standing order to Save the Children in protest at your rejection of a £750,000 donation because it is linked to fossil fuels.
If you can afford to refuse so much money, and deprive potential beneficiaries of that amount, you certainly don’t need my chicken-feed contribution.
I have for many years believed your
highly-politicised organisation, with its excessively over-paid executives, was
squandering the money it received from poor idiots like me but I am now quite
convinced you are more interested in feathering your own nest,
virtue-signalling and playing to the Guardian-reading gallery than you are to
saving children.
I do hope you will forward this email to some of those exalted powers-that-be, not that it will make any difference but it would at least alert them to how contemptible they have become in the eyes of at least one long-term supporter.
Mili Sargeant from the alleged charity replied:
Thank you for getting in touch and sharing your thoughts on this matter.
Save the Children is committed to making decisions that are in the best
interest of the charity but ultimately in the best interests of children. Our
Donation Acceptance and Refusal Policy ensures we do not compromise on our
mission and values when it comes to raising income. This policy governs the
acceptance and refusal of donations by Save the Children UK where there is
perceived risk to our programming, staff, reputation, financial position or
brand in accepting the donation and is reviewed regularly by our Board of Trustees
and Executive Directors.
Our work is focused on meeting the immediate needs of children in crises
around the world, as well as protecting their futures. We will take tough but
calculated decisions where needed to achieve this. This means raising and
spending funds responsibly, but also turning down funding where we believe
doing so could have a greater long-term impact for children. Climate change is
one of the biggest threats to children’s future and now is the time to do
everything we can to minimise the impact of this.
We are in the process of reviewing our global policy on accepting
donations from fossil fuel companies to ensure it reflects our position on the
threat the climate crisis poses to children.
We understand that not everyone will agree with this decision, though I
hope this goes some way to explaining why we have chosen not to accept funding
from Neptune Energy.
Thank you again for all the support you have shown Save the Children. As
you mentioned your regular contribution to Save the Children via standing
order, you will need to cancel this at the bank. If possible, please can you
kindly provide me with your address so that I can update your records with us
and log your complaint.
I look forward to hearing from you again soon.
I responded:
Thank you for your cut-and-paste reply. I can't believe anyone takes this
guff seriously.
The long-term impact of climate change is all very well but the immediate
and necessary needs of refugees from a war zone surely take immediate priority.
Either that or Save the Children now has so much money it doesn't know what to
do with it all.
It is deeply regrettable your organisation has such delicate sensibilities
it cannot see the pain and suffering before its very eyes.
If, and it’s a bigger if than we might like, but if we all survive without being vaporised in a nuclear war, then Vlad Putin has done us all a favour.
The monstrous invasion of the Ukraine is the drastic wake-up call the West has needed for some time.
We have been sleepwalking into this disaster ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
We have complacently assumed Russia and China would more or less accept our liberal, capitalist, freedom-loving values and we could all live peacefully side by side.
Their true, sinister, aims have always been visible but we preferred to look the other way.
We have allowed the Chinese to devastate our manufacturing industry and steal our technology.
We have encouraged ultra-rich Russian crooks, thieves and murderers to launder their money through London.
The disgusting sight of gold- and blood-dripping oligarchs, their vile women and entitled offspring flaunting their ill-gotten gains around our country has been one of the most appalling developments of recent years.
We enrich their dictators’ regimes by lapping up cheap goods made by slave labour in mega-cities like the one responsible for unleashing coronavirus on the world.
The Chinese and Russians between them are destroying civilisation, democracy and innocent lives – genocide or invasion, murder and incarceration, it’s all the same to their barbaric leaders.
What has the West being doing instead of recognising our enemies and dealing with their many threats?
We have spent our time banning free speech in universities in case some non-woke feminist might upset a bloke who wants to pretend he’s a woman.
We have been chucking statues in the sea because someone over 200 years ago did something reprehensible.
We have abandoned any idea of fuelling our own power needs in exchange for ineffectual windmills, Russian gas and Chinese-financed, French-owned nuclear power plants that may never be built.
Oh and we have saved money by giving up on the idea we might one day need to go to war again to defend ourselves. It’s far more important our soldiers and spies recognise their white privilege.
If we see the invasion of the Ukraine as an opportunity to get a grip, recognise what’s really important and realise our way of life is under constant threat from countries which would love to destroy us, some good may yet come out of this terrible war.
Tragically, I doubt if we have the strength of will to recognise just how ridiculously complacent we have become. Meanwhile, the destruction of our freedoms will continue apace.
I hope we recognise the urgent need to change before it really is too late.
Otherwise, the era of peace, freedom and democracy may be coming to an end. Do our leaders – and the rest of us – have the guts to hold back the tide of chaos, dictatorship and destruction? I doubt it.
We all know Prince Andrew is an obnoxious, entitled nob who deserves zero sympathy for bringing the Royal Family into disrepute but what illegal activities did he actually engage in?
His critics bandy about words like 'rape' and 'paedophilia' but he is guilty of neither. At the absolute worst, he may - if we choose to disbelieve his denials - have had sex three times with a 17-year-old girl.
Nobody has claimed this was anything but consensual. She may, perhaps, have been 'trafficked' but she was old enough to make up her own mind whether she wanted to jet around the world with millionaires. And by all accounts she boasted of having sex with the Prince.
So if it was consensual, and she was 17, where is the crime?
The Prince and Virginia Roberts allegedly had sex in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands (oh the irony).
It is quite legal to have sex with a 17-year-old, no matter what the age of the other participant, in London and New York. In the Virgin Islands, the age of consent varies from 13 to 18 but, supposing the latter applied in this case, the Prince might be guilty of statutory rape on that occasion.
However, Ms Roberts or Giuffre as she is these days, alleges their passionate embraces took place during an orgy involving nine other girls as well. Are we supposed to take her allegation seriously in such circumstances?
The hatred directed at Prince Andrew - much of it fomented by those who loathe and detest the Monarchy - is over-done, misplaced and unfair.
Now he and his mother are £12 million the poorer, it is difficult not to conclude that Prince Andrew, not Virginia Roberts, is the real victim.
British Airways used to claim it was the world's favourite airline. It must now be the worst.
I have never had a trouble-free flight with them and it is now impossible to talk to anyone in the entire organisation.
It doesn't deserve passengers. It is an abomination.
Our new multi-million pound GP surgery in Broadway, Worcestershire, might be a marvellous new facility - as long as you don't want to see a GP. Getting a face-to-face appointment is impossible.
As a result, I wrote a review on the NHS website about the New Barn Close Surgery:
If you want to see a doctor, go elsewhere. If you are thinking of being ill, go elsewhere. If you want to see a nice new building but no GPs, this is the place for you.
In case anyone might think reviews on a website run by the NHS might somehow be uncensored, I received the following email this morning:
PLEASE NOTE THIS EMAIL IS NOT MONITORED. IF YOU RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL YOU WILL NOT GET A RESPONSE.
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Barn Close Surgery on the NHS website.
Unfortunately, we are unable to publish your review as it does not contain enough information regarding your experience at the service.
See our comments policy.
Please provide more details about what you liked or disliked about the service, including the reasons you have come to this conclusion.
Consider adding as much information as possible to help assist others in making decisions about their choice of provider or allow the provider to take the feedback and use it in a constructive way.
Kind regards,
The NHS website ratings and reviews team
PLEASE NOTE THIS EMAIL IS NOT MONITORED. IF YOU RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL YOU WILL NOT GET A RESPONSE.
The ratings and reviews team are unable to offer health advice. For life threatening or emergency medical issues please dial 999. For other urgent medical concerns, please dial 111, or visit 111.nhs.uk
Review reference number: 1190242
‘Our’ National Health Service is a national disgrace.
Our overpaid, lazy, part-time doctors won’t see us face to face,
They prefer to fob you off with a random telephone call
Which takes place at a time of their choosing if it takes place at all.
In the queue at the supermarket when you’ve gone down the shops,
With a basket filled with baked beans, biscuits and lamb chops,
Your doctor will call you and make you explain
In front of an interested crowd of people where exactly you feel the pain,
Why you have these embarrassing lumps
And what is leaving you so down in the dumps.
When they have finished they’ll no doubt fob you off
With a pill and some tests and something for that cough,
Then they’ll get into their personal-registered four-by-four
While the BMA campaigns for more money, more, more more.
And this was written before it took an ambulance almost 24 hours to collect a friend who needed to go into hospital.
