More than 200 elderly people a day are forecast to die from cold-related issues this winter, charities are warning.

The three contributing factors are an especially cold winter, soaring fuel prices, (with soaring profits for fuel companies) with increases of up to 20% and reductions of up to 25% in pensioner fuel allowances.

The Mature Times free newspaper is running a Care in the Cold campaign advising its readers how to prevent hypothermia and how to spot it.

www.maturetimes.co.uk

More than 600 people a day currently face losing their homes, warns Shelter.

This figure includes those whose homes are being repossessed because of not keeping up with mortgage payments, and those who fall into arrears with rent.

Stress-related illness will affect 60% of the above.

Four women and a man have received jail sentences for posing as collectors for the Help For Heroes charity in the north of England.

The gang registered with the charity to obtain material for their fraud and then targeted railway stations, football matches, concerts, bars and pubs, including a pub in Newcastle where they were filmed on CCTV making collections. Natalie Hornby, 39 got 30 months, Jacqueline Newman, 57 got 16 months, Ellen Grant,45 got 15 months, Lydia Cummerson,41 got 12 months and Hornby’s husband Robert, 49 admitted a minor part and received a 4 month suspended sentence.

The offences of conspiring to commit fraud by misrepresentation were committed between November 2009 and February 2010.

An animal rights campaigner and hunt saboteur sacked for his views and activities has won a discrimination case against his former employers.

Gardener Joe Hashman, 43, was sacked by hunt supporters Ron and Sheila Clark owners of Orchard Park Garden Centre, Gillingham, Dorset two days after covert film taken by Hashman helped convict hunt supporter and TV cook Clarissa Dickson Wright of attending an illegal hare-coursing event. The tribunal judge ruled that he had been illegally discriminated against for his “philosophical beliefs and activities” which were legally akin to religious beliefs.

Hashman has received an apology and a financial settlement from Orchard Perk’s managing director Richard Cunningham and his board of directors, who made the stupid decision to discriminate.

Meanwhile the League Against Cruel Sports is pledging around £1 million on staff and equipment to gather evidence against illegal hunts.

They say that far too few have been convicted under the Hunting Act of 2005, which banned hunting with dogs, and will be setting up a database of those involved and placing hidden trap cameras in areas where hunts are known to operate.

The hunting fraternity’s PR machine, the Countryside Alliance wants the Act scrapped.

The Booksellers Association has claimed that the tax and business rate concessions given to charity shops enable them to unfairly undercut the prices that bookshops are trying to charge and have called for these to be scrapped in the current tough economic climate.

Charities enjoy exemption from corporation tax and VAT on the sale of donated goods, as well as an 80% concession on business rates. It is estimated that around 8,000 charity shops sell books and that there are around 250 specialist charity bookshops. In 2010 Oxfam made £20 million from sales of 12 million books, or £1.66 per book. Continue reading →

The Battersea Dogs and Cats Home is seeking information about its founder, Mary Tealby, who set up one of the world’s best known animal charities, in 1860.

Since then the home has helped more than 3.5 million lost and unwanted cats and dogs, yet very little is known about its founder, save that she was divorced, had no children, was originally from Huntingdon, and died in 1865 in Biggleswade, Beds where she moved to from London in 1864 after falling ill. She is buried at St Andrew’s church there and the charity has started to restore her grave and have put out a call for information, especially a photograph or painting of her.

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The Alex cartoon in a recent edition of the Daily Telegraph Business section gave an interesting slant on why top business types might support charity fundraisers.

Two diners at a charity dinner are talking:

“The October Club Charity Dinner has always attracted the great and the good of the City… In the past their motivation for attending could have been questioned. Were they just here to show off how much money they could afford to spend? Was it all just boastfulness, pride and ego on their parts? But the fact that in the current grim economic climate people have turned up in such good numbers to support this worthy charity show it’s clearly about something else…”

“Paranoia? Desperation? Fear?”

“Quite… Everyone’s taking the opportunity to frantically network in case they lose their jobs…”

Are you stressing this aspect of your events enough?