Intelligent Giving professes to sit on the fence where moral questions are concerned; yet, whilst hiding behind this mask of impartiality, it makes partisan comments that leave this reader with little doubt about its underlying position. So, in his article "How charitable are public schools", Adam writes, "It's not our business to say whether this stance is morally right or wrong," yet elsewhere on the site, in the article "Why is Eton a charity?" prefixed by the usual claim to moral ambivalence, one finds, ".. we somehow doubt that the parents stumping up a minimum of £26490 a year in fees do it out of the goodness of their hearts."

The act of giving generates a feeling of superabundance within an individual and is therefore a fundamentally healthy thing to do. I guess that this is at the heart of IG's mission. The problem is that taxation is so onerous that most people cannot achieve these states of superabundance as often as they would wish; typically, for every two pounds that we earn, the state forcibly takes one pound. So, it seems to me that the corollary of IG's mission to encourage charitable giving should be to argue for lower taxation and to generally be in favour of the state shrinking.

So, let's have no more carping about some parents who, happily, have been able to keep their children away from the grip of the Cold Monster.

There was another interesting article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article3216617.ece

There seems to be a lot of pre-judgment going on. I would have thought that only time will tell whether or not fee-charging schools fail the public benefit test. I suspect that some will, and some won't - and the same may well go for many other charities.

That said, having read annual reports for some schools, a lot of them have a long way to go in demonstrating their public benefit.

In some ways I'm surprised that schools have created such a stink about the new legislation - after all, there has been no suggestion that schools should be shut down, and, unless they are making vast financial surpluses, losing charitable status wouldn't necessarily have a massive impact. If it is the status that means so much, then one might hope that anything that helps to protect the value of that status, such as ensuring delivery of public benefit, might be welcomed.

Is the man on the street armed with the right information though?
Or is the man in the street someone who may or may not have an opinion, that may or may not have any basis in fact?
I've an opinion about a private school, the one I went to. Doesn't mean that I need to have an opinion about the other private schools that I know little about.
Or that my opinion about one will apply to the others. :)

The man in the street may be able to make a far more sensible decision than the judiciary. But will they have the information to do that? Or will it be based on any bias or ideology?

I'd hope the judiciary would operate without bias as much as possible - pipe dream I know. But could they be any worse than anyone else?

Martin

Why is it 'bonkers' to ask the public their views on 'public benefit'? It would seem common sense to many. Quite often the man or woman in the street, armed with the right information, can reach a far more sensible decision than our esteemed judiciary. You don't have to research too much to reveal nutty interpretations of criminal law, family law, charity law (or any other branch of law that you care to mention), which now tie the hands of law makers and law enforcers to our detriment.   

To be fair I'm quite sure that you're not deriding the very concept of public consultation, but rather the way in which it was carried out. I just wanted to seek clarification! 

Don't shoot the messenger