In the news

I'd prefer not to say, given my criticism of the local authority on a public forum, but it's an area that has significant levels of homelessness and rough sleeping.

The bulk of my charitable donations goes to housing and homelessness support but I would like to also give to smaller, on the ground organisations that have significant, positive impact. It can be a bit difficult to "assess" smaller, local charities/initiatives as to their effectiveness, hence my money tends to go to the bigger ones where I hope my tiny contributions can be part of bigger things. I don't know you in person but, in short, I trust what you're doing (as much as the internet allows). My pockets aren't that deep but I would be happy to contribute.
However, I also agree that the funding should come from the relevant government departments and institutions if possible. I think it's fucking criminal how local and national government has given up so many responsibilities to those most in need.
Our local library has shifted to volunteer-run. It's a lovely place but...

We work with CCGs and public health on other programmes. The issue is that no one wants to pay for a chef, a part-time member of staff and some space, but will fund the support services. It's the former that enables referrals to the latter. Plus, a freshly cooked meal in a safe space isn't such a bad thing in its own right.

We'll get there, but it's a struggle.

Fair enough, I only ask because I've been planning on starting to volunteer at NLAH in Stoke Newington but finding it hard to fit time around work, was wondering if your place was nearby and needed a hand.

JSNA! JSNA!

That's all we know....

It's about time to refresh our charity donations, if you do think about opening up to regular donations pls let me/us know.

Thanks, and I think you should continue to make your donations where you are comfortable - I'm not looking to raise money from the forum, just sharing my frustrations really.

One of which is the shift of risk from local authorities to small charities when it comes to mental health. Where they used to fund programmes and interventions, now they expect you to get the money from individuals through their "personal budgets". A) the admin is a nightmare, B) it takes ages to get, if you do get it, which kills your cashflow, C) you're trying to "sell" a service to an individual with a mental health condition, D) you will provide the service anyway, because people have needs and E) all of the above makes it impossible to budget and plan, so you end up losing money.

I'll PM you

It was a long winded way of saying same as Chalfie ^^^
Maybe makes sense to get some parts (chef+space) funded through donation if they are sticking points?

This, the borough next to us have just replaced everyone's wheelie bins again for the second time in 6 months. That's 3 wheelie bins per household at say a cost of £75. Why there was no reason for it the old bins where fine and this is the same borough thats had massively reduced services for the elderly one of which was removing a well used shuttle bus to and from nursing homes to a day centre.

Thanks, I will think on, you're probably right.

I was looking at a couple of things about "effective giving" and it seems like the most efficient use of money is to just give money as directly as you can to people who need it and know how to make use of it, and the way to save as many lives as you can with your money is to buy mosquito nets. Which I found interesting.

Not sarcasm, just my thoughts about what motivates some people.

The issue is that no one wants to pay for a chef, a part-time member of staff and some space, but will fund the support services. It's the former that enables referrals to the latter.

Enabling referrals to support services has often been a disincentive for councils/government to fund things, since they find themselves incapable of dealing with the referrals. Efficiency in one area shows up the backlog in another.

I've witnessed first hand a council switching a contract for assisting people in disability benefit claims from a competent voluntary organisation to an incompetent one, because the competent organisation was generating more referrals than they could cope with. Moving the contract led to a 30x slowdown.

Didn't matter that the efficient process would actually have saved the council money in not just the long but the medium term, they didn't have the capacity to deal with it and didn't want that revealed.

Why would we want to tax the income homeless people get from donations?!

Seems like common sense but I would not at all be surprised if they genuinely wanted to.
You get taxed on all the money you’ve already payed tax on anyway so what’s a few percent off donations too.
It’s not like they’d miss the extra, they’ve got nothing as it is. 90% of something is better than 100% of nothing

*last part is sarcasm

Maybe they're doing it to let you add Gift Aid to your donation. Every little helps.

Seems fine with me. The majority of them would be under the tax treshold anyway. But at the same time they would effectively enter the legal economy – and perhaps gain a greater sense of self worth and inclusion? And once you have a QR code to take payments you can more easily transition to odd jobs like washing cars or walking dogs.

But at the same time they would effectively enter the legal economy – and perhaps gain a greater sense of self worth and inclusion?

Not everybody on the street wants to be included. There also are concerns about the potential for abuse of captured data.

This is an idea that began in China and spread to India. The Chinese provenance - coming from a society where technology is explicitly seen as a way of monitoring and controlling the population - should be one cause for thought. The way the Indian schemes have developed show the concern is justified.

In most of the Indian schemes, it costs "donors" nothing to scan a beggar's QR code. The beggar is paid a small amount for each scan by the business running the scheme, because they can harvest all kinds of data from it and monetise that.

Setting aside the various ways the data on both donor and beggar can be abused, those schemes are promoting the idea that you don't have to give money to beggars. The impact on beggars who don't opt in and the long term effect on beggars as the schemes grow is unknown and troubling. In parts of America the prison system has made it possible to make money from putting people in jail and keeping them there, with toxic results. What happens when there's money in having people begging in the streets?

The U.K. scheme isn't there yet, but things could go that way if we don't think about that now.

The way the uk gov treat homed people on benefits I can't see any upside for the homeless to expose what meagre benefits they receive to further scrutiny based on the amount of income they get from begging.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic
and
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope

Bullshit. I'm not saying there's something wrong with the scheme in itself (which part of "things couid go that way if we don't think now" did you not read?), but I am saying the inspirations for the scheme have been used abusively, which demonstrates that not only is there potential for abuse but that potential has already been exploited.

The exploitative misuse of harvested data has become a problem in pretty much every single instance where tech made it possible, so far. Thinking about that isn't paranoia. Thinking about how tech can be exploited should be the default, now that it's omnipresent.

Learning a list of logical fallacies isn't much use if you don't think before trotting them out.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/listingoutlogicalfallaciesinsteadofcontributingtothediscussion

My assumption was that @davidual finds both the idea of tattooing or barcoding people repellent, hence the comparison. Did I miss something?

Of course I understood that. I stand by my comment. People often introduce allusions to Nazi crimes as a way of showing their disapproval of something. As Nazi crimes, e.g. the one being alluded to here, were a good number of orders of magnitudes worse than ordinary political business or what is happening at the moment, even in the current climate of seemingly increased racism and political tension, comparisons with Nazi crimes are generally completely inappropriate.

Here, there wasn't any proposal to actually 'barcode' people. That was a mistake introduced as part of a poorly-written headline. It's a stupid idea (and I agree with you entirely about the data harvesting issues), but it's mercifully a world away from tattooing concentration camp prisoners or any of the kind.

The Nazis arrested, deported, forcibly sterilised, and murdered homeless people, although it's not really known in what numbers, as owing to their lack of official registration many of these people have left few traces in official records.

I'm just saying that people shouldn't completely unnecessarily drag in the Nazis. Comparing or relating them to much smaller problems in this way trivialises what happened.

@Markyboy Just reading Markyboy's posts from page 2138. Impressed with your commitment dude. Possibly anecdotal but I feel like I've noticed a real increase in rough sleepers in SE1 the last year or so. I'd like to do something practical to help out is possible.

I work for a public company and as part of my annual objectives have to do a minimum of two days a year of voluntary work for charity and can take up to 6 days without losing any pay. There's hundreds of people in this office who would jump at the chance to do something immediate and local such as helping out with a scheme like yours. Can you drop me a line if you think we could organise something?