Early this evening London time, Little Britain’s David Walliams clocked off after a mightily impressive feat, swimming 140 miles of the toxic Thames over eight days in aid of Sport Relief. In the process he has managed to raise over £1,000,000, which will be invested by UK charity Comic Relief in a number of worthy causes, including mental health, refugee and asylum seeker support, and local community programs. Along the way he has had to contend with Thames tummy, some typically mediocre British Autumn weather, and has even managed to save a drowning Labrador. If he has successfully managed to avoid sustaining some serious health problems as a result of his swim, he can probably count himself lucky.
The whole venture speaks eloquently to some of the challenges facing charitable organisations and governments in the twenty-first century. The usefulness of the collision between charity and celebrity certainly bears some consideration. It is difficult to envisage any ordinary person or any politician managing to achieve the level of media coverage and attention that Walliams has managed to reel in for Comic Relief through his superhuman aquatic efforts. Yes, it was a stunt, and it has been a little self-aggrandising, but frankly this is the sort of public-spirited self-aggrandisement that both the United Kingdom and Australia could do with a lot more of. As wrong-headed as some of them may be, the least a celebrity can do with all their stardust and whimsy is to set some of it aside for some worthy causes.
The flipside in this particular case, of course, is that the amount of money Walliams has managed to pull in arguably could and should have been much greater. £1,000,000 is a lot of loot, but considering the extraordinary pools of wealth many individuals and corporations have at their command in the United Kingdom, it feels like a slightly understated amount. Perhaps it is a function of this “age of austerity” that we live in, but it seems in this case the rigour of the stunt has not been outweighed by the amount donated. Playing the devil’s advocate for just a moment: why not just get together with a bunch of other wealthy celebrities and businesspeople, donate £100,000 each and achieve the same result?
The fiercest irony? In the same era that boring old democratic governments with their unexciting processes, procedures and “rule of law” are being pestered by much of the public to lower taxes and withdraw from society – a comedian swimming up a shit-addled river is able to extract some willing silver from all our pockets. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…. the future!
You can support David’s Sport Relief efforts here.
The wealth corporations have belongs to their shareholders, and shouldn’t be given away unless there are good PR reasons to do so. The employees and shareholders can choose to make charitable donations from their pay or dividends.
Tom Davies – I’ve never bought that argument. Corporations consist of and within a community of people and values. They aren’t exempt from those values. We would be stupid to run a system that created pools of huge wealth and power, and then allow that wealth and power to be used in ways that threaten our values, by acting as if they didn’t exist.
I go part of the way with Tom here. I find the idea of corporate philanthropy to be ethically dubious at best if not downright objectionable, and I’d just as soon it didn’t occur.
I prefer the idea of the state simply applying a suitable taxation and regulatory regime on all commercial activity and raising the resources to do the work that needs to be done that way.
What people do with their own money after tax is of course entirely a matter for them, though I’d not make it tax deductible.
Yes, raise tax. If (big if) an Australian politician had the actual gumption to always stand their ground loud and proud running a campaign around higher tax, with clear and unambiguous policies of directly increasing social welfare, health and education and clear and unambiguous demonstrations of how Australians lives would be improved, I think it would all come as such a surprise that they’d win a landslide. They’d certainly get plenty of media attention
.
“toxic Thames”?
Ok, I wouldn’t drink its water, and its natural siltiness makes it look muddy, but the Thames has been subjected to a sustained effort over several decades to clean it up and is actually one of the cleanest city rivers in Europe nowadays.
MH, it all depends on how much you like sewerage!
Most people like sewerage. Very few like sewage.
Thanks Fran. You can have one without the other, but each would be wasteful in its own way.
So long as we allow corporations to have many of the same rights we grant actual persons, corporations should behave like them, too, and I have no problem with holding them to a higher standard of behaviour than I expect from people individually. If they can contribute to political campaigns, they can sponsor arts events and give to charities.
“If they can contribute to political campaigns, they can sponsor arts events and give to charities.”
Ooh, now there is an idea – for every dollar they spend on political donations or political advertising/lobbying they must spend a $ on donations to arts or charity.
Imagine how charities would have benefited from the anti-mining advertising, the anti-carbon tax advertising, the anti-pokie laws advertising.