Everything That’s Wrong With the World (and How to Change It)

What wacky japes we got up to in the name of charidee

So you think you’re a bit “crazee” huh? You’re not. People who go around boasting of being “mad” are, almost without exception, stultifyingly dull. You want crazy? Visit a mental ward and see if you still think it’s funny.

But it’s not so much the enforced jollity that rankles or even the crass perversity of sitting in a bath of baked beans to raise money for those who can’t afford to eat.

It’s not the sliding down your friends and colleagues’ estimations when you refuse to participate.

It’s not the necessity of repeatedly harping on about how half the money is spent in the UK in order to appease the jingoistic simpletons whose concept of charity is unable to embrace relative need (“Umika here has to choose which of her sons to feed today, but at least your local playground has a new layer of soft tarmac”).

It’s not the self-serving c’lebs peeling off their “wacky” face to turn earnestly to the camera and inveigle us to part with our hard earned cash after they’ve done their skit and returned to their luxury pads in Chelsea and Hampstead Heath.

It’s not the virtual pollution of wacky songs or the actual pollution of a million stupid red noses.

It’s not that big corporations like Sainsbury’s and Walkers make a mint out of the extra product they sell and bank a hefty deposit of undeserved goodwill to boot.

It’s not even that I once made a cake that had cost about £8 in ingredients that was cut into 8 slices and sold off for 50p a slice.

Actually it’s all of those things. But more than anything it’s this: that we all get our egos stroked and get to feel good about all the fine work we’ve done, turn around, go back to sleep and take no further part in actually changing the world. You’re happy you helped raise £60m? That’s ONE POUND for every person in the country. The Bank of England has just created £1250 of new money for every man, woman and child in the nation out of thing air. The average salary in this country is £25,000. And yet ONE POUND is enough for you to be content?

Karl Marx said of religion, “[it] is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” In our increasingly secular age, we seek to assuage our moral nausea not by going to church but by dressing up as a banana and running through Swindon town centre clanging a bucket. The pay-off is the feeling that we’ve made a difference. But to feel like we’ve made a difference is a very different thing to actually making a difference. How can you actually make a difference? Let’s see…

TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO THAT ARE BETTER FOR THE WORLD THAN BUYING A RED NOSE

1. Vote. That £60m you helped raise last year is less than 1/25^th of the UK Government’s DAILY budget. The parties are not “all the same”. Get informed. Get involved.
2. Don’t buy that charity single. If you’re itching to buy music try getting something good to number one instead and then donating some money to charity.
3. Read a different newspaper. The world is a million colours. Each newspaper has its own. If you read the Guardian, take the Telegraph for a week. If you take the Mail, try the Guardian. If you don’t read anything, try it.
4. Start a standing order to a charity. That way you’re giving all the time.
5. Learn about the problems in the world. Similar to 3., if all you ever do is watch ITV “news” or Sky, try Channel 4 or BBC4’s “World News Today” – far more informative. There’s a Gary Larson cartoon: the scene is a plane crash; there’s a bird reporting from the scene earnestly, “we think the name of the bird sucked into the engine is…” And that sums up our attitude to news perfectly really. If it happens somewhere they speak English, it’s a tragedy, otherwise it’s a mishap.
6. Actually go to Africa.
7. Volunteer. Do something locally to help your community.
8. Organise a “curmudgeonly old gits refusing to wear a red nose” day and give the proceeds to a nominated charity. You’d be surprised how many people would gratefully pay not to participate.
9. Give your money to Comic Relief but DON’T take the red nose or the single or any of the other wacky bits and bobs that reduce the impact of your money.
10. Tell everyone else what you’re doing by clicking on the “add this” link below.