SHC Collections SCAM - 'Third World Clothing Collection'

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on March 6, 2010 at 16:44

SHC Collections are not the only ones involved, Chris. Liz posted on this whole problem last year and I think you'll find other threads on Hol as well.

From time to time we have a flurry of these leaflets in Tottenham Hale and I always advise people to take stuff to a charity shop. The council's website takes a similar view, by the way.

I'd like to see local councils and legitimate charities working together and actually learning from the commercial recycling companies. They do two things. Like legitimate charities they channel people's charitable impulses and generosity. But they make things as easy and simple as possible. Some even leave a bag with the leaflet so all the resident has to do is fill the bag and leave it by their door.

Though this can itself be a problem. Bags are sometimes stolen and cherry-picked; with unwanted stuff dumped on the street. Liz has posted about this in Harringay streets.

Anyway, I'm pleased you're helping publicise this, Chris. It's a non-party issue, and we can all work together - and with local charities - to tackle the problem.

(Labour councillor & prospective candidate Tottenham Hale.)

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Permalink Reply by Liz on March 6, 2010 at 16:57

Yes, thanks Chris for raising this. There has been a recent upsurge of piles of clothes dumped in the Passage stolen from doorsteps. Best to get rid of your unwanted clothes at the charity shops in the area. There is more information about various organisations in these threads

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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on March 6, 2010 at 17:53

SHC = SHITE HELPS CHARITY

Seems to me these scavengers are not only profiting from their own greed and our own charitable impulses/generosity but from our long learnt attitudes that what this mythical place, 'the Third World', needs above all is just our shite, our cast-offs, what we've got sick looking at - and if by bagging up this shite that we probably never really needed and leaving it on our own doorsteps we instantly, painlessly, invisibly declutter our wardrobes, linen trunks, handbag cupboards, shoe-racks, bathroom cabinets, consciences - thereby creating "oodles of new space" for new shite and new prickings of guilt about the naked and starving of 'the Third World' whose continued existence is thus guaranteed. The perfect vicious cycle in the name of virtue.

SHC Collections are onto us and our attitudes to development - and the best of good luck to the vultures.

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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on March 6, 2010 at 19:09

SEEMS to me this is little better than fraud and I can't understand why this is allowed to go on. It's more than just about trading standards. This tends to hurt big long-established charities.

Charitable status has long been attractive to criminals because of tax exemption.

(I was saddened to learn recently that much or most of the money raised - Live Aid etc - to help starving Ethiopians in the 1980s was diverted towards arms purchases)

The whole field of charity supervision needs a shake up and not least, its supposed regulator, The Charities Commission. Under the current government this super-quango has become politicised: it needs to become an effective regulator.

Charity Ends at Home: In local terms, the Commission has long and resolutely turned a blind eye to egregious bungling, incompetence and breaches of trust at our biggest local charity that many people can see literally: Alexandra Palace. The Commission connived with the council in running an unlawful Consultation in connection with the council's attempt to sell our Palace to a former slum-landlord (and received severe criticism in court over that). But their complicity with Haringey is both chronic and ongoing.

Why? Because this Charitable Trust is controlled by politicians and for some reason, they get a free pass.

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Permalink Reply by John D on March 6, 2010 at 21:23

To be fair - the last leaflet that I read said ( admittedly in small print right at the bottom ) that it was not a charity but a commercial company.

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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on March 6, 2010 at 22:13

If SHC Collections had published a Charity Registration No. and it was not a registered Charity, that would probably be unlawful if not illegal. I don't happen to have a leaflet in front of me, but many of these operations seek to convey, by misleading, an impression of charitable giving. In this way, they may stay within the letter of the law.

The law needs to be tightened and the Regulator (the delinquent Charity Commission of England & Wales) needs to be overhauled. Like the council-controlled Alexandra Palace Board of Trustees, the Commission exists in a grey area, largely free from effective supervision and regulation. Like the AP Board, it is able to make perverse decisions – and get away with them, unless challenged in court.

Our charity (I chose these words carefully) our Charity, Alexandra Palace, is an official Charity with full registration with the Commission – but as a charity, engaging in Charitable activity, it exists largely in name only and continues as a sham. That sham would have been more visible had the council succeeded in selling off our building for property development.

The main beneificiaries of our charity have not been us, the residents of north London, but have been the long list of consultants, advisors and officials, all of whom have a vested interest in maintaining the current dysfunctional status quo. In this, they are aided and abetted by transitory politicians, who normally have no qualifications to govern a Charitable Trust.

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