Je préfère un chien que je ne connais pas à un voisin que je connais

Le Royaume-Uni est célèbre pour la générosité de ses habitants à l'égard des animaux, peut-être le révélateur d'une certaine misanthropie.

Dans ce post du blog de Pete Wedderburn, le journaliste spécialisé dans la vie animale du Telegraph, on apprenons quelques chiffres intéressants.

Quelques sites à visiter :


RSPCA

PDSA

Dogs Trust

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home

Animal charities: the battle for financial survival

In my Pet Subjects column in the Weekend Section of the Daily Telegraph today, I mention the latest animal charity fundraising effort that I’ve come across. Ask Jeeves, the “question and answer” website has launched a partnership with the RSPCA. From now on, people can not only ask questions about dogs – or anything else – but they can also download cute dog pictures for free. Every time somebody sets a “dog theme” as their home page, Ask Jeeves will make a donation of 50p to the RSPCA.
Animal charities don’t receive any public funding, although some argue that they’re all funded by the taxpayer because of the fact that donations are exempt from income tax. Effectively, the state donates the equivalent of the unpaid tax. This is one of the reasons why it’s so important that the Charity Commission monitors charities, ensuring that they meet their goal of “benefitting the public in a way the law agrees is charitable”.
In all sectors, there are 180000 registered charities in England and Wales, with a combined income of £52 billion, but more than half of them have an annual income of less than £10000. The Commission watches charities carefully, dealing with 2600 reported “serious concerns” last year.
Animal charities have high overheads. Costs rapidly mount up, from employing staff to run animal rescue centres (kennelled animals are labour intensive), to paying for all the establishment overheads that any business needs to fund (light, heat, telephone etc), to the specific extra costs of food and veterinary care. Fund-raising is a continual challenge to generate income to enable them to survive.
It’s well known that British people give generously to animal charities, and they have good reason to do so: there are no state agencies charged with caring for animals that find themselves in trouble with no owner to care for them. The RSPCA also has a role of investigating cases of alleged animal cruelty, and instigating prosecutions. Arguably, the animal charities fulfil a role that ought to be carried out by the state itself, which is why it’s right that donations are exempt from tax.
Despite the rumours, animal charities fall far behind other sectors in the “giving” stakes. The top four sectors are medical research, charities benefitting children and young people, religious organisations and those engaged in relief work overseas.
To look at the “big five” animal charities, according to 2008 figures: RSPCA income is about £120M a year; PDSA is £93M; Dogs Trust £60M; Cats Protection £36M; Battersea Dogs & Cats £16M. These are big numbers, and they’re big organisations, carrying out wide reaching work on behalf of animals across England and Wales. Despite the high income figures, they still struggle to cover the overheads of their daily workload.
Legacies traditionally have played a major part in funding animal charities, with the stereotypical elderly person living alone with their pet, perhaps feeling more loved by the animal than any humans in their lives. The PDSA, for example, earns 45% of its income from legacies, 23% from donations and gifts, and 22% from marketing activities and shops. The remaining income comes from selling preventive treatments (e.g. wormers, vaccinations) and miscellaneous sources. Other animal charities have a different balance of sources of income, with busy professional fund raising departments vying to find innovative ways of steering the organisation to financial survival.
If you care about animals, donate to an animal charity. They need all the help they can get, and they’re doing a job that just wouldn’t get done if they weren’t around.

Aimer les animaux et détester les gens ?

Voici une brève chronique du député conservateur au parlement européen et redoutable ennemi de l'Union européenne, Daniel Hannan qui pointe le doigt sur la force de la haïne.

Les causes militantes savent bien que les sentiments négatifs sont le meilleur moyen de motiver un prospect.

C'est vrai pour les personnes âgées.

C'est aussi vrai pour les défenseurs des animaux et dans une plus large mesure la gauche du spectre politique n'échappe pas à la règle.

Where would Lefties be without hatred?

Richard Curtis’s eco-prop video confirms the worst impression people have of greenies, namely that, behind all the self-righteous rhetoric, they are misanthropic (hat-tip, James Delinpole). See how easily they glide from platitudes about low-energy lightbulbs to fantasies about killing those who dissent.

I’ve noticed before that a surprising number of animal lovers are really people loathers. Not all, of course, nor most; but some. In every age and nation, there are people casting about for a valid reason to detest their neighbours. Such people are often attracted to apparently high-minded campaigns. Think of the abolitionist campaigner in Steven Spielberg’s film Amistad who would rather lose the case, condemn the slaves and win more publicity than free them on a technicality.
Of course, ideas are not responsible for the people who back them. Bad people can take up good causes. I have Leftie friends who are generous and idealistic, and most greenies are actuated by a sincere concern about the future. Almost all of us, after all, want clean air and water; almost all of us like the idea of pandas mating ineptly for years to come; and almost all of us want a diversity of energy supply. But, just occasionally, as during the Brent Spar fiasco, we see that some eco-campaigners are, like the abolitionist in Amistad, more interested in bashing people they dislike than in advancing the cause they notionally represent. If you doubt me, start reading Guardian comment threads. Ah, hatred: where would Lefties be without it?