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Saturday 5 June 2021

The price of virtue signalling



The UK’s 100 richest families are being urged to commit £1bn over the next five years to tackle the climate emergency and halt the destruction of the natural world, as the world prepares for a big push on environmental issues at the G7 summit.

Each of the 100 richest families in the UK, and the 100 biggest charitable foundations, will receive a letter on Saturday asking them to make the climate and biodiversity crises a focus of their philanthropic efforts, in order to stave off pending disasters that would imperil all their other charitable efforts.


Surely the UK's 100 richest families didn't become rich while failing to spot scams when they see one. A few quid thrown into the pot for virtue signalling perhaps, but this is an average of £10 million per family.

4 comments:

DiscoveredJoys said...

...and of that £10 million per family how much is going to be lost in 'services', taxation, 'administration', and remuneration for the great and good who will turn up several hours per month to add their 'lustre' to the schemes?

I expect some consultants have already made a tidy sum 'creating' the begging letters and selecting the list of recipients.

Cynical? Moi?

Sam Vega said...

I love the bit about how this big donation will stave off disasters which would imperil their other charitable efforts. That's a nice touch.

"You're a great guy, but nobody will be able to tell you that if all of humanity is frying or fighting tsunamis. Here's how we can help..."

Scrobs. said...

This yet another scam, based on false 'science' and just another way to create money for the wealthy and the politicians. It will do absolutely nothing for Joe Public.

If a bunch of tree huggers want to try and crowd-fund their stupidity, then let them see how many normal citzens give a toss!

A K Haart said...

DJ - how much is going to be lost? They will aim for most of it and probably succeed.

Sam - it is a nice touch, although I can't imagine any hard-headed person actually believing it. Yet there is no accounting for the whims of rich people.

Scrobs - a very good point. It's a way to test all kinds of official scams - crowd-fund it and publish the result.