Within two days of writing about Gordon Brown’s refusal to waive the airport tax for a visit by young children from Chernobyl, Blogpower’s finest philanthropist, Tom Paine, has kindly paid this money himself. He has paid £960 out of his own pocket – an extraordinary gesture of compassion and goodwill. I’m sure his namesake would be very proud of him.
This is what Moscow-based Tom said:
This is a worthy cause, we don’t need Gordon. We can do something ourselves. Here’s my proposal. I will reimburse the new airport taxes to the charity for 12 flights this year, if
(a) other readers of your site will match that donation for 12 tickets for next year, and
(b) you will finally put the Blogpower banner and Blogroll on your site. B^) You are our most famous member and we need the links!
Post the address and bank account details for the charity and let’s get to it.
Tom paid the money today. I certainly promise to add the Blogpower banner, I’m hoping Geoff will see to it when he returns from Dubai due to my limited skill in this area. Blogpower is a supportive blogging community which I am proud to be a member of, I have made some great cyber friends through it.
Let’s hope that we can do the same next year, as Tom suggests. I do admire a man of action, not empty words, someone who means what he says. Tom, I am overwhelmed by your instant response and generosity, I know it will mean a great deal to the charity which can now use its money to give the sick children an extra special visit. Three cheers for Tom….
That is wonderful news. Surely grants could be found for this sort of thing, rather than setting precedents of arbitrary tax relief for one charity, but not another. IMO.
What a great man Tom Paine is. Well done him! It shows the power of blogs can be a force for good. All the very best. Michelle
If you publish bank details we (my family) will be happy to contribute what we can.
Mimi, this is the info I have:
Main account for the charity is Lloyds 30-93-94 7353763 mentioning Cambridge link but the best way is for a cheque to be banked by me made out to Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline.
Tom advises that readers who want to make a donation should add a zero at the beginning of the account number to make it 8 digits.
That’s wonderful. Well done, Tom.
This is the comment posted by the charity’s local treasurer on the previous post thanking Tom, I wanted to repeat it here:
“I would like to send a special thank you through your site to Tom Paine for his very generous donation. The children all do appreciate what we all do for them but it is the money that we raise that enables us to bring them here in the first place and £960 will nearly be enough to bring four children including this new level of tax.
Thank you again David Hopper”
By my calculations, Tom has actually paid the £40 aiport tax for 24 children to visit – what a fantastic man.
This is very generous of him.
As you know I withdrew from Blogpower because of the comments from one member who was less than equal minded in his views.
Tom is an incredibly generous man.
The philanthropic tendancy is alive and well here in South Devon where a party of these children is to visit. Not only is it an issue of air tax, but new laws pertaining to car seating. There has been a good response to the booster-seat collection in our town in order to ‘properly’ equip their mini-buses.
And thanks from Mark Shelton too posted on the other post:
“I would like to re-iterate David Hopper’s commnets. This is a very generous donation from Tom Payne and I would like to thank him very much and say that I appreciate a man of his conviction. I have been with the children today (Thur. 15th Feb.) on a guided tour of Ely Cathedral (provided free of charge) followed by a wonderful cream tea at the Old Fire Engine House Restaurant in Ely, again provided free by the manager.
Re. Jim’s comments, some charities and other organisations already get tax exemptions. I do not know a huge amount about the workings of charities, but in my work I deal with charity shops and they can be exempt from waste disposal charges (thus not paying landfill tax) and from business rates, and I think in some cases charities can reclaim VAT. So on humanitarian grounds why can they not be exempted from the airport tax as this is an integral part of the work of the Chernobyl Children Life Line charity (ie. getting childen out of their contaminated environment for a month). I wouldn’t class the work of the Royal Opera House (excellent as it is if you like opera) as humanitarian or possibly life saving.
Mark Shelton”
I am happy to support this for next year -Well done Tom.
Ellee – can you drop me a note offline to discuss what would be an appropriate contribution?
Praguetory, that’s very generous, and thanks to Guthrum for following up on this as well. I will drop you a line, but it is entirely up to you, many thanks.
http://lookingforavoice.blogspot.com/2007/02/brown-humanitarian.html
[…] Let’s talk, small talk By Ellee Today, Blogpower’s finest philanthropist Tom Paine, a British lawyer living in Moscow, is my guest author and describes his shyness with small talk. Is that a problem for you too, do you have an opening line that helps to get the conversation flowing? And have you ever made an embarrassing mistake when speaking a foreign language? […]
Just received the following email from Mark Shelton who helped organise the trip:
Ellee, just returned from the Belarus children’s leaving party (they depart from Chettisham village hall 9.15am Sunday for Gatwick) and all on the committee of the East Cambs branch of the Chernobyl Children Life Line charity would like to thank you for your support in carrying an article about the children coming to stay in our area. I really don’t think that any of us expected there to be such a quick and positive response to your blogg.
We will start planning for the group of children coming over in June/July in early April, and if you don’t mind I will copy you into any press releases I send out about this next visit. I would be grateful if you would write another article, only because I’m a great beliver in the maxim, all publicity is good publicity and I know that people will read your blogg that would not receive the message through our normal publicity route of the local radio and papers. I am not expecting any such response as you managed to achieve this time, just that I know it makes a difference people reading about the plight of these children.
Thank you again
Mark