Questionable high pay of charity bosses

I READ recently about the ballot for strike action by staff at the West’s largest homeless charity, St Mungo’s. Bristol City’s official provider is a travesty which should be addressed by those at the top of that organisation long before this action needs to be taken, but really comes as no big surprise.

I have in the past written many letters highlighting the fact that many of the main charities, Oxfam, Save the Children, Age Concern, and more recently Captain Tom’s Wonder Walk to name but a handful, spend up to 98% of their income on executives, directors and ‘administration’. St Mungo’s seems to be no exception with its own chief executive.

Charity shops attract a reduction of 80% to 100% on their business rates and are staffed normally by unpaid volunteers. However, St Mungo’s workers are on the streets every night helping the homeless, a sometimes thankless job in all winds and weathers, and not just sitting in a warm comfy office on £189,000 a year ‘directing proceedings’, but on pretty lousy pay hardly commensurate with life at the sharp end. Far be it for me to discourage people donating to such a worthy charity, or any charity come to that, but we would all feel a lot better if directors and chief executives of certain charities did NOT wallow in such greed at the expense of those who do the work at ‘the coal face’.

Common sense by those at the top, before strike action by those at the front who directly help the less fortunate, should prevail.

Like the the First World War generals, it was easier to send the cannon fodder over the top from the safety of miles behind the front line.

Edward Kynaston Lydney, Gloucestershire