Afternoon:
10°c
The good news is that charities across London are overwhelmed by offers of help from volunteers for Christmas.
Organisations like Crisis, which organises an eight-day Christmas scheme for the homeless, has had to turn volunteers away. It is a wonderful tribute to the generosity of Londoners that so many people give freely of their time to others during the economic downturn. But the recession has undoubtedly hit charities hard with a fall in donations, particularly those that rely for much of their funding on legacies. The reduction in house prices and the value of other assets will force many of them to dig deep in their reserves.
This is a good time for the Treasury to be considering an imaginative new scheme for raising the levels of charitable donations, particularly from the wealthy. Right now, the proportion of national wealth that is given in charity is about half the level in Britain that it is in America, where there is an expectation of philanthropy by the rich and a tax system that rewards them. Here, the rich give, proportionately, less than the poor.
There are, indeed, incentives for charitable giving through tax relief of 40 per cent through the gift aid system but a new scheme, the Mehta/Mirrlees proposal, devised by a Nobel-winning economist and the head of a rich-people's networking organisation, would create a simpler and more ambitious method of raising money. It would give tax relief of 50 per cent on donations towards fulfilling the UN's Millennium goals. The cost of the tax relief would be borne by the Department for Overseas Development, which would match, pound for pound, the donations but the money would be kept separate from the government's existing aid programme. If the scheme were initiated in all G8 countries, it could, potentially, raise billions towards poverty relief.
This is the kind of imaginative thinking we need to boost philanthropy, but it must be applied to domestic charities as well as to big development goals. The Treasury must consider ways of helping charities across the board at a time when money is tight but the needs they meet are as great as ever.
Saving the Rose
By way of a very welcome Christmas present, Kingston Council has saved the Rose Theatre in the town from closure. The theatre is a wonderful, imaginative enterprise, modelled on Shakespeare's own Rose Theatre, with an Elizabethan-style pit for a standing audience. It provides a centre for the performing arts quite different from most suburban theatres and the opening production earlier this year, of Chekov's Uncle Vanya, directed by Sir Peter Hall, made clear the scale of its ambitions.
Building the theatre was an enormously brave undertaking, especially without any guarantee of future income. The reality is that projects like these cannot survive without public funding as well as private donations. In return for help, the theatre is to offer services such as free space for education programmes to the local community.
Councils have to acknowledge that the arts need support because they make a valuable contribution to the local economy. For all the merits of the West End, a really thriving arts environment should be widely spread. The Rose is now on a stable financial footing, and this is good news for its local supporters, and for Kingston.
And celebrating...
Christmas. All the things that are associated with the feast of Christ's birth - mutual goodwill, the company of family and friends and a spirit of disinterested generosity - are especially welcome in a harsh economic climate. The good cheer of the season and a holiday at home or with friends make for an antidote to the gloom of recession. Moreover, some of the best things about it cost nothing at all. We wish all our readers a very merry Christmas.
