Uncharitable Ranting

I'll start off by saying I think it's a good thing to donate to charity. But do you ever wish you didn't get asked to donate quite so often? Every day without fail I get asked to donate by one of this list:

1. Big Issue sellers - my pet hate
2. I guy I walk past on a bridge every morning on the way to work who wants charitable donations for his  scribbles with a blue biro pen... err... no thanks
3. TV ads
4. Work (although this one is usually for food or something fun so that's fine by me!)
5. Street canvassers who try to lure you in with phrases like "Are you against animal cruelty?" If you say no you're a jerk, if you say yes then they attack you with guilt trips to extract your bank details from you in the middle of the street (so not going to happen)
6. Added payments on things I'm already buying, tick the box to donate 20p to such and such
7. Friends and relatives and people you hardly know wanting sponsorship - often for something that must be quite costly in the first place such as climbing treacherous mountain peaks

Anyway, I get a bit fed up of it all the time. I'm starting to think I should just walk about with money pinned to me so people can just pick it off me! I especially resent campaigns where you aren't told much about it. Like starving people in Africa, why are they starving and for how long? Also if they keep having a ton of babies the problem will grow at a rate of knots, do they need family planning, better farming? Is there a war near? What's going on? If I donate £15 a month will it actually help solve the problem or just prolong the inevitable? Also Africa is a rather large continent, where is the problem?

And poor little so and so that has to walk hours and hours to the well and back every day for water? Just what exactly is preventing little so and so and their family from moving closer to the well? Militants? Farming conditions? I need more information before I just hand you my money. And what about my taxes? Doesn't the government pay for aid? Am I paying twice or is that not getting to those specific people?

And then there's the sheer number of charities. If we all give a little to each what would that solve? And surely some charities like for starving people are more valid than charities for sports equipment? Perhaps the solution would be for the whole country to pick one charity a year to all donate to and maybe we could start ticking off problems rather than throwing a bottomless pit of money at everything?

Bottom line, if I have to be bothered whilst I go about my daily life this week for more charitable donations I'll spontaneously combust. Rant over.