Monday 17 November 2014

Fun with numbers: "Children in Need 2014 raises £32.6m for charities"

Amount 'raised' by the BBC/Children In Need dowhattery: £33 million.

Amount raised by the TV licence fee to fund the BBC: £3,722 million.

(And as I always like to remind people, that's a smidge more than the UK government collects in Inheritance Tax).

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, so Children in Need raised what the BBC spends in 3.2 days. We must now ask ourselves if the whole unholy exercise takes up more than 3.2 BBC days (it's probably about half a day of pure broadcast, but what about the prep?) thus we can work out whether we can help more children by simply turning the whole bloody thing off for a few days?

Lola said...

Or less than 1% of BBC budget. Why the bloody Hell don't we just deduct that from the BBC budget at source and then we can avoid the bloody awful evening of tripe?

Tim Almond said...

Lola,

They get away with it because it has the "shield of charity" where if you hate the Band Aid song, you hate African people and want them to die from Ebola.

(BTW I'd like to give some money to help that, any idea who I can give it to that will do the most good? I'm thinking MSF but any suggestions are welcome).

Rich Tee said...

I remember seeing an article years ago comparing CiN to government social security spending. It was a tiny fraction even back then. That was when my eyes were opened personally.

Mark Wadsworth said...

TTG, L, my thoughts exactly. Dock each BBC worker 1% of their salary, job done.

TS, it appears that the Ebola outbreak is under control and new infections are stable.

RT, another excellent point. Total spend on Child Benefit and Child Tax Credits is in the order of £35,000 million. Which makes you realise how much the BBC gets...

Bayard said...

The point of Children in Need is to allow people to feel good by donating money in a public way. The fact that it raises a paltry amount by comparison with other budgets is neither here nor there.

Tim Almond said...

Bayard,

That's why I won't give to CiN or Comic Relief. I feel embarassed about making a show of generosity and give quietly to causes that I've done some research on. You have no idea what CiN or Comic Relief are going to do with your money.