Your editorial “Charities need to be well run – but not rapacious” succinctly captured the bind in which charities find themselves. We expect them to operate to unimpeachable professional standards, while preferring that they remain purely vocational (voluntary) organisations.
Just to exist and function as a modern organisation, let alone do anything of any value, a charity requires significant management resources and skills. You mention the cost burden of HR, governance and leadership development, but what about financial systems, legal advice, IT, health and safety and facilities management, not to mention communications and fundraising?
To cover these costs, core funding is badly needed. Finding new ways to generate income becomes an understandable pre-occupation. While charities should benefit from acquiring business disciplines to help them become effective and efficient, they need to ensure these disciplines are always subservient to the charitable ethos: service to beneficiaries.
Nick Barton
Templecombe
Somerset
Cure this doctor’s confusion
I am a doctor and I am confused. I work in A&E all day and, sometimes, night, and Saturday and Sunday, every other weekend. This is not because I choose those shifts, but because that is what my rota dictates. However, the government is telling me that my colleagues and I do not provide a “seven-day service”. They are also saying that to facilitate this, doctors need a new contract. To this end, they want to reclassify Saturday as a “normal working day”.
If we are not already providing a seven-day service, then what I am doing for nearly 30 hours every other weekend? If they want to expand weekend services, they need to recruit more doctors rather than adjusting contracts. Finally, if this contract is about creating a seven-day service, and not about cost cutting, why are they not reclassifying both Saturday and Sunday as “normal days” and applying the changes to everyone else who works in a hospital?
Dr Jonathan Barnes
London N4
The heart of the EU debate
The left has always had an ambivalent attitude towards the European Union – and rightly so (“A short history of Eurosceptism”, News). As an economic union, it is based on free-market principles, albeit moderated by social democratic inputs. But the basic contradictions of capitalism, so vividly revealed by the financial crisis of 2008, and the underlying conflict between capital and labour, remain. On the other hand, as a political union, it was inspired by a reaction against the centuries of conflict between continually changing combinations of allies and enemies, culminating in the two world wars. Never again would the European powers send their young men to slaughter each other. The EU has largely succeeded in this.
The human race is beset with an unprecedented range of problems which require co-operation at all levels, from the individual to the global. The EU is an attempt at co-operation to a limited extent at one of those levels. Arguments about economic benefits from membership of the EU as it is today are much less important than what it could become in the future. The UK should be at its heart, working for a sustainable future for humankind. But neither the In nor the Out campaign is currently putting forward such a vision.
Frank Jackson
Harlow Labour party
Time to walk the walk
Research has shown that getting outdoors and walking makes us happier (“Banish those midlife blues – the secret to happiness starts with the little things in life”, News). Prof Paul Dolan’s research says that the solution to happiness is focusing on what gives you pleasure and doing more of it; this can be as simple as going for walks. At Living Streets, the UK charity for everyday walking, we know that walking is great for mental health. Last week, a survey found we are at our most miserable between the ages of 50 and 54. This correlates with the time in people’s life when they are walking less. Adults should aim to be active, and walking more is an easy way to achieve this.
Tompion Platt
Head of policy and research
Living Streets
London E1
Beardie, yes. Bolshie, no
I very much enjoyed Rachel Cooke’s interviews with the inspiring Eagle sisters (New Review). However, her reference to “the blokes who used to run, say, Sheffield in the 1980s” looking and sounding just like Jeremy Corbyn, is not quite right. The leading members of Sheffield council were mainly in their thirties and forties: people such as David Blunkett, Clive Betts, Bill Michie and Helen Jackson, who went on to be MPs, Roger Barton, who became an MEP, and the Rev (now Canon) Alan Billings, currently police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire, none of whom either looked or sounded in the least like Jeremy Corbyn.
Other leading members of the council, like them, were firmly focused on maintaining the fabric of the city in the face of the then Conservative government’s onslaught on its jobs and services. They drew back from going down the same path as Liverpool.
(Admittedly, David, Bill and Roger had beards!)
Veronica Hardstaff
(former Sheffield city councillor)
Sheffield
