In keeping with its austere image, Nanny's Inland Revenue have banned staff from being involved this Christmas with Samaritan's Purse; the controversial Christian charity whose founder, Billy Graham, in response to 9/11 described Islam as "a very evil and wicked religion".An internal memo tells staff that they cannot continue to be associated with the charity; because its operations do not conform to diversity policies, and might bring the Revenue into disrepute.
However, very generously, the Revenue do allow their staff to donate to the charity in their own time!
The Revenue's 100,000 employees have supported Operation Christmas Child, run by Samaritan's Purse, since the late 1990s.
Christmas Child sends over a million shoe boxes from Britain to children in countries including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Romania, Serbia, Sudan and Mozambique.
Donors are asked to pack boxes with gifts.
No Christian literature is included in the boxes. However, the charity does separately distribute Christmas stories from the Bible and encourages Bible study in areas where it gives toys out.
A spokesman for the Inland Revenue said:
"We have very clear workplace policies regarding the importance of valuing difference.
When an organisation demonstrates evidence of being at odds with those core values we cannot make special provision for that organisation to be supported on our premises.
To do so would be hypocritical and at odds with our diversity commitments."
The Church of England noted that:
"It does seem a strange way of promoting diversity.
If this charity was aiming to do a heavy conversion job on vulnerable children, that could be criticised. But the shoe box operation is another thing entirely."
Steve Whaley, of Samaritan's Purse, said donors to the shoe box scheme were warned that boxes must not include "anything of a political, racial or religious nature".
As ever, in order to promote her narrow view of "correctness", Nanny ensures that others suffer.
Whilst the reasoning behind the apparent ban seems quite unreasonable in many ways it may be valid from a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteMany IR staff will be non-christian in their religious outlook. The support for the charity seems therefore to ignore its opinion about the version of Islam interpreted by people who wish to terrorise. My guess is that the majority of the staff coould not give a monkey's about the religion since there is a seemingly christian organisation delivery aid to largely muslim areas. Who cares where the stuff comes from? More money for other things if they don't have to buy things for the kids - would be one way of looking at it.
What does concern me is that my taxes seem to be paying people who are public servants to work on this stuff. In their work time it appears, if the memo has to point out that they can still support the charity in their 'own' time.
So where did this mandate come from?
If a private firm decides to do undertake unpaid work for the charity whilst paying employees that is a matter for the firm and its shareholders.
Public servants should not assume they have that authority. Just how many people does the IR (or whatever it is now called) employ and how much of its resources are consumed in order to provide the service for this charity and others like it?
It's a bit like local authorities giving money to fund christmas lights. Why? What right do they have to do that? It's not their money to hand out as they wish to whoever they want to support. It should be shared evenly and spent on infrastructure which benefits the whole population for more than a few days at a time.
By the same token if the local population is agreed that it wished to support the use of lights, at any time, to improve its environment and was to provide the funds to do so then the councils should not stand in their way beyond requiring adherence to sensible and reasonable planning and safety requirements.
But I thought that all Revenue employees were devil worshippers...
ReplyDeleteHowever, very generously, the Revenue do allow their staff to donate to the charity in their own time!
ReplyDeleteAnd that’s exactly how these employees should be associating with this charity – on their own time, and with their own money! To allow an agency of the State to “officially” sanction, sponsor, or support any charity or non-profit organization is to allow the State to co-opt that organization. A cursory look at history shows this to be a bad thing, to put it mildly (the story of Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a textbook example).
Steve Whaley, of Samaritan's Purse, said donors to the shoe box scheme were warned that boxes must not include "anything of a political, racial or religious nature".
Excuse me, but Samaritan’s Purse is a private organization that can put whatever it damned well pleases in its shoeboxes, especially given such vague conditional terms as “political, racial, or religious” by a rogue government agency. Mr. Whaley and his Samaritan’s Purse colleagues may want to take this opportunity to kindly tell the Inland Revenue Service, or any other governmental organization in any other country in which it operates, that it will no longer accept contributions or support from government agencies (as I said earlier, individual government employees would certainly be free to contribute of their own time and money to any charity they wished). Shunning government subsidies or support is the only way they will remain even remotely free of State-sanctioned meddling.