A government plan to effectively bring back fox-hunting in England and Wales has been put on hold. This was an amendment to the Hunting Act to allow foxes to be flushed out with a pack of dogs, rather than just the two allowed, before the fox was shot. The planned vote on the issue has now been postponed.

The shelving of the vote, which has enraged all the mostly-Tory MP’s supporting hunting, was made after the Scottish National Party broke their pledge not to vote on matters that did not affect Scotland and vowed to destroy the government’s likely tiny majority on the issue by voting against them. Continue reading →

Meanwhile other killers of animals for pleasure are facing widespread disgust, condemnation, censure and calls for their punishment after Walter Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota, paid more than £30,000 to impale a tagged national park lion in Zimbabwe with a crossbow. The animal, well-known to tourists as Cecil, was only wounded by the impalement and had to be tracked for two days before being killed with rifles, skinned and then beheaded so that Palmer could take a trophy back to America.

Since the senseless killing, other brave American hunters have been exposed, including Jan Seski, the director of gynaecologic oncology at Allegheny Hospital, Pittsburg, who has also impaled a lion and several elephants with a crossbow in Zimbabwe, and Sabrina Corgatelli, a senior accountant from Idaho University who proudly posts pictures of herself in South Africa with dead giraffes and other animals on her website, with comments about the extreme happiness she feels after making the kills. Continue reading →

A 75 year-old female volunteer has been sacked from the hospice shop where she worked free for 30 years, because she was uncomfortable about using technology in the form of the computer and the till.

Three other women who supported Jane Brooks at the Dovehouse shop at Cottingham, near Hull, and had put in a combined 40 years free service, were also sacked by the charity’s chief executive, Anna Wolkowski. Continue reading →

The launch of a beer brand into pubs could generate £1.5 million for Prostate Cancer UK.

The Two Fingers Brewing Company, which was set up two years ago and which gives all its profits to the charity, hopes to get a pub distribution deal for its flagship craft brew, Aurelio, of which more than 80,000 bottles were sold in 2014. Currently it is available in some supermarkets such as Tesco and Morrisons.

Prostate cancer affects one in eight men in Britain, say the charity.

Cases of aggressive and illegal marketing by charities have dominated recent news media, including the pages of specialist marketing magazine Decision Marketing.

On May 6th the body of Olive Cooke, the UK’s oldest poppy seller at 92, was found in Avon Gorge, Bristol. She was thought to have committed suicide whilst being in ill-health and depressed. However it has emerged that she had been plagued by phone and post by hundreds of different charities. Cooke told the Bristol Post last November “I have always donated to charities but as I am getting older I have been told I need to start cutting back” She then revealed that she got up to six mailings a day from charities, and “more because Christmas is coming” and added “I think the elderly are targeted with this sort of mail on purpose, as charities think they have lots of disposable money, or they might have donated in the past, but receiving so much is overwhelming”. Continue reading →

A donation of £3 million of her £10 million bonus to charity by Harriet Green, former CEO of Thomas Cook, has been described as an “abhorrent attempt to gain public sympathy”.

This is the view of the mother whose two children were killed in Corfu by carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty water heater at a hotel recommended and booked for them by the tour operator. A recent inquest heard that Thomas Cook accepted without checking the statement by the hotel that there were no gas-fuelled water heaters there, an approach that prompted a recent inquest to find that the tour operator had failed in its duty of care towards its customers.

Meanwhile some MP’s are donating to charity pay rises that they don’t believe they are entitled to take.

Faced with having to accept the 10% pay rise given to all MPs by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, a figure that PM David Cameron has said he will pocket, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, along with Labour ministers Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper have all said they will give theirs to charity.

Seventeen aid workers for charity International Rescue Committee (IRC) have been expelled by separatists from the Ukranian city of Donetsk, accused of spying on rebel operations there.

The aid workers were a team sent to Donetsk in April by IRC president and former British Foreign Secretary David Milliband, to focus on the hygiene and safety needs of women and young girls affected by the conflict.

Tightening up on money laundering has caused some banks to pull out of emerging markets, this then making it difficult for charities to send money to those countries affected.

Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney has explained that some of those banks caught providing accounts and services to money launderers have chosen to dump the region, or the line of business altogether, to avoid further punishments.