A week’s a long time in politics, Harold Wilson famously said back in the 1960s. He was of course referring to the unavoidable fact that just when you think all’s well with the world, real life has a marvellous way of sneaking up on you and “legging-you-over” - as the Chancellor, Gordon Brown found out to his cost just this week.

Back On 21st March 2007, just after his most recent budget speech, people were queuing up to promote good-news stories about Big-Gordie’s generosity and helpfulness towards the Child Poverty initiative.

Commenting on Gordon Brown’s eleventh Budget statement, Child Poverty Action Group’s Chief Executive, Kate Green, said: “As a member of the Campaign to End Child Poverty we recognise the important step that the Government has made in this Budget towards halving child poverty by 2010. Extra investment at this stage is vital to keep us in reach of that target. Today’s Budget investment must be significantly extended in the Comprehensive Spending Review, particularly for groups like disabled children and larger families.” (more…)

I’ve long been a technology promoter and an advocate, particularly, of all web based applications. It’s interesting how IT / web literate people are these days and how that growing IT / web literacy impacts in the most unexpected areas of your everyday life.  Here’s a couple of examples from my humdrum life; last week I renewed my Car tax completely online. Instead of getting all the documents together and shuffling off to queue in the Post Office only to find when you eventually get to the front, the woman in the cage says “this insurance document is for the wrong car” or something like that……..aaaarrrgghhh!!! No, I simply type in my vehicle number and the website back-end technology goes off and checks if I’ve got a current MOT (I do) and if I’ve got current insurance (I do) and then having passed that quality threshhold satisfactorily - it takes my payment electronically and a few days later my new road tax disc turns up in the post.  Job done!
 
Another recent example of pushing-the-envelope with IT / web literacy I became aware of was when Comic Relief turned this to their advantage when they  used their website to help raise even more money - but also to get their hands on it quicker.  (more…)

Each year, 20,000 dolphins are killed off the coast of Japan and by petitioning the Japanese Government to act against this slaughter we may be able to make a difference. These barbaric killings are subsidised by the sale of live dolphins by fishermen to the international aquarium market, which pays upwards of $45,000 for specimens to be used in dolphin shows and swim-with-dolphin entertainments. Right now American aquarium specialists are buying 12 bottlenose dolphins for the Ocean World amusement park in the Dominican Republic.T his will subsidise more killings for meat products. The status of these species is often endangered and the killing methods are far from humane. (more…)

A Happy (belated) Birthday to D4C!  On 1st February 2007 D4C celebrated its first birthday and we’d like to say a big thank-you to everyone who has supported D4C over the past year.  

One of the main aims for D4C was to provide a single point of reference, where our charity partners could communicate with potential charity donors and encourage them to support their various causes - by setting up online donations and purchasing charity gifts. (more…)

Put a “spring in your step” with an RSPB membership. Since 1889, the RSPB has dedicated itself to preserving wildlife and the environment it’s dependent upon. Many people may regard the RSPB as solely a bird preservation society, but in truth the organisation is behind many global initiatives to protect the environment as well as the wildlife that relies on it. Featuring more than 1,000,000 members, 12,000 volunteers, and 188 natural reserves, this rapidly growing charity focuses on securing a healthy environment for birds and other wildlife and all money raised goes towards that goal. (more…)

This could be right up there along with turkeys giving their support to more Thanksgiving and Xmas celebration dinner parties - but this week saw the launch of Honda’s new gas-guzzling Formula 1 car (5 m.p.g) under the banner of the “Earth Car” with Honda proclaiming their environmental ‘green’ credentials at the same time? 

Maybe it’s similar to taking the sceptical view of the space programme, in that shed-loads of money was spent on putting a man on the moon and yet all the little-people back on earth saw, as a positive outcome, was the emergence of teflon coated saucepans and pyrex ovenware! But that’s not really the case.  There were lots of side-benefits and learning that emerged from the space programme that slipped seamlessly into our everyday life and we don’t have to be en-route to the moon to acknowledge that. (more…)

A visitor to Donation4Charity.org emailed us to say that they had previously collected used stamps and given them to their vet to pass on to help protect endangered Elephants. Unfortuantely we were unaware of this programme but we pointed them in the direction of the WWF who had this response :

You can send used postage stamps to the WWF and we can sell them in bulk to a dealer to raise funds for our conservation work.

The address is:

WWF UK. Panda House, Weyside Park, Catteshall Lane, Godalming. Surrey. GU7 1XR

I do hope you find this information helpful. Thank you for your support of WWF.”

So there you have it. Sending your used stamps to the WWF can help to save the lives of animals worlwide!