El Reg partners with Action for Children to give IT industry an uncomfortable night We’re pleased as punch to announce that The Register is the official media partner for Byte Night, the annual sleepout fundraiser for Action for Children, the UK charity which has been caring and sticking up for vulnerable young people for 150 years. So, over the next few months you can expect regular exhortations to pull your …
"Action for Children, the UK charity which has been caring and sticking up for vulnerable young people for 150 years."
Such a depressing indictment on the United Kingdom to have to need a charity to look after the young of our country at all, let alone for the last 150 years.
Good luck El Reg, it's a worthy and noble cause.
Have done something like this quite a few years ago. Anyone doing it wrap up warm, even London streets in summer get bloody cold at night, I had trouble sleeping from the cold.
El reg you should note that on that link you can just make a plain donation as well, for those of us who can't join in the sleepover. :)
No equivalent in the USA; interesting concept. Im extremely pleased The Reg is partnering with this effort; very good.
The kiddos and I work an evening a week at the local homeless shelter. Making coffee, keeping the peace, and so forth. One task is secure any meds and valuables the guests bring with them. An ominous sign for techies? Im locking up more and more laptops and misc IT gear.
Sure, many of the guests are there due to severe medical/psychological issues that would actually be treated if our health care system was itself sane. An increasing number were just one paycheck away from thile edge and got shoved off. Lately it IS the IT guy sleeping rough
I better get my @$$ back to work... chop, chop.
This post has been deleted by its author
I hate children. I've always hated children. Even when I was one myself.
I hate unsolicited requests to donate to charity. They are attempts to guilt me into giving, and my instinctive response is to reply "fuck off." Even if it's a charity I support, and voluntarily donate to, if they approach me in this way they get taken off my list of charities I donate to.
So if you'd promoted the charity and suggested we donate, I might have done so even despite the fact that I detest children. But because you partnered with them to apply moral pressure to us, I will never donate to them.
I am explaining my views on this, not exhorting others to emulate me. Nevertheless, I expect near-infinite downvotes for saying this. So be it.
Don't you mean a Barbie?
Modern Kiddiewinkies are far too precious and wrapped in cotton (undyed organic, from a Fairtrade estate naturally) wool to be allowed something as nasty as an Action Man. Action Man is far too politically incorrect.
Yet when I were a lad, we built tree houses and underground burrows and got really filthy by 10:00 and you hadn't come of age until you'd had at least two trips to A&E after treading on nails.
My how times have changed.
"Modern Kiddiewinkies are far too precious and wrapped in cotton (undyed organic, from a Fairtrade estate naturally) wool to be allowed something as nasty as an Action Man. Action Man is far too politically incorrect."
My first Action Man was the space one, where he had a jet pack and a blue thing that shot out yellow arrows. The second Action Man I had was a swimming one with a canoe. Neither of which are particularly politically insensitive?
I'm fully aware I've just dated myself.
had at least two trips to A&E after treading on nails.
I trod on a nail in plimsolls as a kid, my mum merely stod on the plank and pulled my foot off, asked if I could wiggle my toes and when I said yes, commented "you'll be fine then, you've had your tetanus".
First time I had an accident and it was deemed important enough to go to A&E I thought I was dying. :)
So, you feel strongly enough about the charity and the method of solicitination to express your distaste -- rather than saying nothing and just not joining in -- but not strongly enough to actually sign your name (or at least your El Reg handle)? I'm not sure what I could say about this that is more damning than the post itself.
Hmmm... Well, I suppose there's always: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." -- Abraham Lincoln (Attribution uncertain)
So not to disappoint, have a down vote.
Most of what is wrong with your post has already been covered by my fellow commentards, but nonetheless what an utter cocksocket you've made yourself out to be. And a cowardly one to boot.
It's not as if those 'pesky kids' are sleeping rough by choice you dick. Liking kids is not a requirement to showing them a bit of compassion when life is shitty is it?
Twat.
It's not for the proletariat to clean up the mess of the ruling classes.
A little camping trip in Hackney might raise £500k. If we cut tax evasion in the UK by 1/3rd for just one year, you could buy every single homeless kid a house. And of course that would do little to resolve the underlying problem. Many kids are broken by abuse and trauma, and will require state support their whole lives one way or another (eg: ending up in prison).
The ruling classes are selling weapons, promoting wars, and laundering the proceeds though property and tax havens. They are fucking laughing at us. In the face of such malevolence, there is nothing you can do to alleviate the environmental stresses that cause mental illness in children. Not this, not anything.
"Not this, not anything.
Fair comment, but that doesn't mean we can't at least attempt to make the mental stresses a tiny bit less shitty. Sometimes self worth can receive a useful boost when a person without any sees random people doing something to try to help, it's like they're not just alone and forgotten.
You're right, it won't solve much, but given that I believe one of the main reasons that certain extremely rich people pushed Brexit so hard in their media outlets is exactly because they want the EU to leave their tax dodging alone and they will later want to lobby for fewer employee rights without that pesky EU thing getting in the way... Hell's going to freeze before anything is done about tax evasion and to be brutally frank, this whole thing is destined to get worse. But that shouldn't stop anybody from helping now.
Oh, and AC sixth post down (that hates children) - fuck off. I tried to think of a polite way to phrase it, then I read your post again and decided that, yup, that's exactly the response you deserve.
". But because you partnered with them to apply moral pressure to us, I will never donate to them."
Your morals. Your choice. Ethics however are an entirely different thing. Ethically what ElReg is doing is a good thing, spreading the word about an event and encouraging participation. I support them for this. I see no "moral pressure" here, and that you do see it makes you a reactionary snowflake from my "moral" perspective. This will likely leave you alone, lonely, cranky and isolated in your old age, and will grant you the same emotional experience as the kids. Good luck.
"Austerity is violence "
" If we cut tax evasion in the UK by 1/3rd for just one year, you could buy every single homeless kid a house" [CITATION NEEDED]
While I agree with your commentary in principle, your lack of functional and realistic solutions makes the whole comment rather limp. Curing the financial situation of wealth disparity will take far more than fixing or resolving simple tax laws. Free market is and has been the way we've created wealth. The issue is that a fully free market involves slaves and the wealthy, armed portion stealing what it wants/needs. We need to work to find a balance in both law and education to encourage a better balance in the distribution of wealth.
Kids end up homeless for a *lot* of reasons in the western world, it is unpretty and it makes most folks with offspring cringe at the though that one of their offspring could end up there some day. There are ways to help these youth in some cases, there are means in some cases, but these ways and means will *never* be fully sufficient, until selfish folks get their collective asses out of their heads, both in how we raise and educate our children, and in how we arrange the world for them to enter.
There is a similar operation held here in Canada, at least in the TeeDot and La Belle Cite, which I have supported - one of the companies I've worked for has at least 8 members of the C suite and a couple BOD members participate, and they and the staff contribute.
"fully free market involves slaves and the wealthy"
No... read Wealth of Nations and you'll see that Adam Smith himself had a very good handle on the constraints needed to ensure the free market worked its magic. What you're describing is closer to a post-apocalyptic anarchy, not civilised capitalism. But then maybe that's what we are closer to ...
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