Laptop and charity

[triskellian]

On the subject of my latest toy, this, too, is being typed from the comfort of my bed. Oh! The joy of wireless networking! It's taking me a while to get used to the keyboard, which is a strange one even apart from the fact that I'm used to a natural keyboard, but, on the whole, I declare the laptop a thing of beauty and a joy forever, as someone who may have been Rhiannon, referred to it earlier.

On charity, I've recently decided that I should be giving some money to good causes. The difficult question now is which charity. There are so many causes I believe in, and think deserve my money, and only so much money. It's hard to narrow it down even to a reasonable shortlist. The National Asthma Campaign is the only one I'm reasonably sure about, for obvious reasons, but I'd like to choose one or two more. So my question to you is, do you give to charity, and if so, which ones, and how did you decide?

Comments

Well...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I have some pretty funny views on charity, by most people's standards.

It's essentially because I object to the way that some things which morally speaking ought to be state funded end up needing to draw most of their money from charitable sources. One of the thngs which makes me most angry about certain right-wing commentators is the way that they jump through hoops not to pay tax and then go on about how generous they are because they give to charity ! <growl>

Consequently, I tend to favour charities where it's not clear to me that the national government (or, to be more strictly accurate: everyone in the country) should be paying. Therefore things like Cancer Research and Amnesty International, generally.

Also, I have a personal preference for things which give people the potential to lead (what I consider to be) worthwhile lives. So I'd rather pay to educate someone in a poor country than pay to feed someone in an even poorer country, despite being horrified that the latter is starving to death in the first place.

Re: Well...

[triskellian]

You have some pretty funny views on lots of things, by most people's standards ;-)

I agree with you that some of these things ought to be state-funded, but I don't agree that the appropriate response to them not being is for them not to be funded at all, until the state realises there are, for example, no books in schools, and decides to buy some... I guess I just can't take the long view on this, cos I'm worrying about the generation of kids who will have no books in the meantime. Books for schools is another on my shortlist.

I also go for the giving books rather than food approach, but mostly because I'm contradicting myself and taking a long view. One of the reasons those kids don't have food is because their parents didn't have books. Linking back to Nina's comment about treating AIDS to help the kids of AIDS sufferers.