# My surefire solution to ensuring there are fewer Children in Need

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/11/20/my-surefire-solution-ensuring-there-are-fewer-children-need/
- Published: 2009-11-20T17:58:04+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

For years, the annual Children in Need malarkey has annoyed me – nope I am not even
going to give it a link.

 

Hard pressed citizens are urged to get out and do their bit to help the BBC raise
money for Children in Need – and who could resist? For there are so many in our 
country to choose from! Children living in poverty, with incurable diseases, who
miss out on their childhoods for a whole range of reasons, whom society is leaving
behind.

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Yep a worthy cause indeed. But frankly no amount of dressing up and rattling cans
and quizzes and bizarre events and challenges is ever going to solve the conundrum
of Children in Need on its own. Cos we don’t earn enough to raise enough.

 

Yet we will be treated to a cornucopia of TV celebs. music “stars” and the like 
making fools of themselves (and ourselves) for hours on our screens tonight to persuade
us to dig deep and keep on giving.

 

I reckon it would be far more entertaining to watch all of them line up to hand 
over a tithe of their overblown undeserved salaries – oh how the tally would rise
then! To end the programme we could have the Prime Minister and Chancellor do a 
double act of revealing the new proportionate tax rate for top earners, how much
it would raise in a year, and how the UK Government proposes to use the cash to 
reduce the number of children in need. They could even persuade Terry Wogan to hand
over his appearance fee!

 

The whole show would be over in an hour. And much more entertaining TV – like the
class acts lined up for Later with Jools tonight, the Low Anthem and the Decembrists–
could fill our screens instead. A longterm solution to reducing the numbers of children
in need in our society AND better Friday night TV. That’s what I call a result!

 

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## Comments

### By: adriansalmon

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/11/20/my-surefire-solution-ensuring-there-are-fewer-children-need/#comment-3820
- Published: 2009-11-25T13:12:44+00:00

Entertaining as your post is, Kate – I disagree! I think Children in Need plays 
a hugely valuable role in educating kids about giving to charity. Each year I sit
down to watch it with my little boy, and each year he says, “Dad, we’re going to
give, aren’t we?”

This year he actually did an upgrade ask on me – “How much did we give last year,
Dad?”
 “£50” “Well, could we make it £75 this year – you do work for a charity, 
and you know how important it is!”

I kid you not – his words exactly. So we gave £75. Don’t know whether he’ll get 
me up to £100 next year – there is Comic Relief to come, as well, of course and 
I expect he’ll do a number on me for that, too.

Strength to him and to the other kids in the land who will similarly be arm twisting
their parents into altruism.

Adrian Salmon
 Annual Fund Manager University of Leeds