Stop throwing money at people's ludicrous pet charity projects

The government is to spend £120m matching charity donations. But it already throws absurd amounts of money at charities. It shouldn’t spend any more supporting people’s pet projects.

It is hard to keep up with the endless idiocy pouring out of party conference season. But one idea that hasn't had much attention yet comes from the sometimes perfectly sensible Justine Greening. She has announced plans to provide "match funding" for various aid projects.

This means, as the Independent puts it, that in the "run up to the next election" some £120m will be spent by the government on contributing to charity appeals. But that is to be only the beginning: "eventually Dfid expects to roll out the scheme to much smaller charity appeals including for instance those run by local churches and Rotary Clubs".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.