Nice People 13: Nice Save

Generali

zagubov wrote: »

I know that in Norn Iron the unemployed used to be allowed free travel on public transport for job interviews. Presumably we have (I hope ) something equivalent in GB. Wonders if NI Rail was ever privatised.:o

This sort of thing is pretty normal in the private sector. My current and previous employers used to give money to, and suggest we donated clothes to, a charity that provides interview and work clothing to unemployed people and those coming out of prison.

DQWD

When I worked for HSBC, they paid minimum wage to any employee that volunteered for charity or local organisations. At BNP you got a day a year of leave you could take to volunteer. Goodman Sachs used to organise and pay for us to do good works and everyone in the company was expected to volunteer for a day a year (I took a group of Alzheimer's carers to Kew on the company shilling which wasn't cheap). A hedge fund I worked for had a policy of paying 10% of gross profits to charity.

Finally my current employer set up a $100,000,000 charitable fund on demutualisation, pays $4,000 a year to any charity where an employee is a trustee, director or volunteers for 80+ hours a year. They also employ a team of 4 to deal with charitable fund raising. We open up our very famous building once a year for people to pay to abseil down and do plenty more besides.

Nomura paid for a roof garden at the local hospital.

Forte used to let their gardens be used for charitable events. A shop chain I worked in for years used to have a charity day when they gave 10% of the profits from the day to charity.

British people tend to be very suspicious of stuff like this. I think they think it must be a tax dodge. Plenty of people seem to think that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet giving away billions is a tax wheeze!

michaels

If I had 23bn I would happily give 22bn to charity

silvercar

I have found a ticketmaster gift card that is over a year old. In tiny print on the back it says that it is only valid one year. Emailed customer service and they said tough. Googling around and this would be illegal in America. :mad:

zagubov

Generali wrote: »

This sort of thing is pretty normal in the private sector. My current and previous employers used to give money to, and suggest we donated clothes to, a charity that provides interview and work clothing to unemployed people and those coming out of prison.

In Aus, you've got the Smith Family. To be fair, that might be subsituting for a lack of state provision.

Somebody a good while back wrote a letter into the papers and suggested that every time a company decided to make anybody redundant, they should continue to keep their salary and job title and make him/her work as a carer or other socially useful role, on the grounds that they'd be doing an honest day's work in a necessary task (eg looking after vulnerable people) that society needs filled and that we have to drag in people from across the world to do at the moment.

silvercar wrote: »

I have found a ticketmaster gift card that is over a year old. In tiny print on the back it says that it is only valid one year. Emailed customer service and they said tough. Googling around and this would be illegal in America. :mad:

Somebody once proposed that that expired gift cards should be require to be automatically donated to a list of socially approve charities if unused so they don't revert to lazy profits for the issuing company.

Nikkster

Generali wrote: »

British people tend to be very suspicious of stuff like this.

In the next few weeks, I'll be spending an afternoon at a local school trying to show the yoof that scientists are normal :eek:

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

I have found a ticketmaster gift card that is over a year old. In tiny print on the back it says that it is only valid one year. Emailed customer service and they said tough. Googling around and this would be illegal in America. :mad:

It's utterly immoral how gift vouchers can go out of date. It's robbery.

GDB2222

michaels wrote: »

If I had 23bn I would happily give 22bn to charity

Would you keep the cash back and tesco points, though?

Generali

zagubov wrote: »

In Aus, you've got the Smith Family. To be fair, that might be subsituting for a lack of state provision.

The great thing the Smith Family does is mentoring and we are strongly encouraged to become mentors from work via an annual driver and also support from my employer. That is something that I suspect Government would struggle to provide assuming it could provide it at all.

They probably do provide some things that the welfare state should/could provide. They probably also provide a lot of things that the welfare state does provide but which the children don't get to benefit from due to the bad choices of their parents.

Unfortunately, unless we are going to redistribute income to the point where everyone earns the same, some children are going to be born into better circumstances than others. That is particularly true in Australia which has some scattered communities which face some terrible social challenges and to which it is extremely expensive even to provide the most basic services.

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

Unfortunately, unless we are going to redistribute income to the point where everyone earns the same, some children are going to be born into better circumstances than others. That is particularly true in Australia which has some scattered communities which face some terrible social challenges and to which it is extremely expensive even to provide the most basic services.

As you know I have relatives in Qld. In the wealthy, modern coastal town where my cousin lives, I've heard disparaging remarks about visitors from a town about an hour inland, as when they visit they don't know how to use escalators.

That's nothing in comparison to the mining town about 850 miles away where my cousin's daughter works. That's more like the Wild West, only with light aircraft.

It's hard to understand the vastness, but more so emptiness, of the place. Several years ago I visited Utah and we drove 60 miles between settlements. Even that seems positively crowded compared to places in the middle of Australia. I still find it hard to get my head round, even though I've lived there.

michaels

So basically if we took the 8.28 to Brighton and their families we could double the population of an area twice the size of Europe?