The arrest of academy school advocate Des Smith in Scotland Yard's 'cash for honours' inquiry has been greeted with a bizarre degree of media glee.
We should all be wary of this culture of contempt for the entrepreneurs and businessmen who are generously donating to academy schools. For the truth is that we have far too little philanthropy.
As Major Bill Cochrane of the Salvation Army puts it: “There is a meanness abroad in society today. Barring a few high-profile exceptions, the rich in Britain give far too little of their money away.”
According to Colin Tweedy of Arts & Business: "The great age of industrial philanthropy is over. More and more now, it is a question of shareholder value."
The admirable Andrew Carnegie principle of distributing excess wealth 'best calculated to produce the most beneficial result for the community' is notably absent among our super-rich. The UK wealthy give less as a proportion of their income than the poor; they give substantially less than their peers in America; and they don't even begin to match their predecessors.
[From a commentary by Tristram Hunt, in the Guardian (U.K.)]
No comments:
Post a Comment