I agree that charities are usually pretty pants. They want to kind to the oppressed without being cruel to the oppressors. Charities alleviate the symptoms of injustice without taking on the vested interests, without challenging authority, without upsetting the establishment. That'll never change anything. It's no good just treating the symptoms - you've got tackle the UNDERLYING CAUSES. And THAT means CAUSING TROUBLE. Charities want to be nice, that's what they're all about, they're not into Causing Trouble.

Hence the slogan "charity should be abolished and replaced with justice".

HOWEVER, the word charity is used in quite a broad sense. Some "charities" ARE actually quite political and progressive and actually quite RADICAL (ok not compared to revolutionary anarcho-communists but if you slag off everyone who'd not a revolutionary and quite a few people who are then there aren't many people left who do fit into your view of an acceptably hardcore dissenter).

NGOs like World Development Movement and Action Aid do kick a reasonable amount of arse.

And stuff like Oxfam and Christian Aid are taking on the international trade rules and the WTO and causing grief for the establishment (in their own polite way ;-) ).

Green campaigning organisations often have "charitable status" but again, they want to change the world and not just alleviate the symptoms.

There are traditional "charities" and there are NGOs - and there is a difference.

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Looking at the advert you pasted, I'd say this:

1) OK so the staff are reasonably well paid. They take the market rate for the work they're doing rather than existing on some kind of 'solidarity' wage. What's wrong with taking the market rate?

"The MARKET is the fu**ing PROBLEM" you might reply. Well yeah I'd be up for living in a post-capitalist society. But these people are reformists - not revolutionaries, and they'd say as much. They don't have any ideological qualms about someone taking the market rate for the work they are doing.

...They believe in lobbying the government to bring about reforms to protect the environment. But they also believe in being paid middle-class wages for doing this lobbying. As long as they don't claim to be any sort of marxist or anarchist (which they don't) then there's no contradiction between what they practice and what they preach - at least as far as the issue of taking a middle class wage is concerned.

2) OK it all looks a bit wanky and business-like and you can imagine the people who'd apply for this job being the kind of people who know how to have a cocktail party ;-). It's all about "team-building" and "project-managing", good "leadership skills" and other nonsense words that you can imagine coming out of David Brent's mouth (or arse perhaps).

And there's all that rubbish about you should "know your way around" Whitehall and Westminster. "Oh Hilary, me old mucker... Robin, how frightfully splendid to see you again. What-ho Patricia!".



But we can't all be prolier-than-thou hardcore spikey anarchists.

So they're a bit posh and a bit wanky. But their hearts are basically in the right place. And they're probably doing more harm than good - even if they fall considerably short of solving the problem.

But I reckon we solve the problem by doing all doing our own thing, but in solidarity with eachother.

If Christian Aid wants to prance around outside the Labour Party Conference demanding "Trade Justice" then nice one, good for them, good luck to them and hopefully their own unique contribution will make a difference, albeit a partial one.

If the Green Party wants to contest elections and be some kind of green opposition to the mainstream process that works to gradually push our 'representatives' in the direction of legislating to protect the environment, then great.

If the SWP wants to fight against corporate globalisation by trying to build "mass mobilisations" then go luck with those mass-mobilisations. Big protests at least draw attention to issues - to the public, not just the politicians.

If smaller autonomous groups want to take direct action against big corporations then great - not least because it draws attention to the issues, thus getting more people concerned and eventually more people involved in movements that try to build change.

And if people want to dress up in black and go around smashing symbolic symbols of an abstract economic concept then that's got it's part to play as well.

Some of these methods may be more effective than others. It may be that some of them are not very effective at all (I don't know) but none of them do any harm to the cause of building a better world.

Diversity within this movement of movements is a strength, not a weakness.

What IS a weakness is SECTARIANISM. The circular firing squad of the people's front of judea versus the judean people's front is our achiles' heal.

So let's stop slagging eachother off and build a (decentralised, nonhierarchical) mass movement that functions as a loose coalition of diverse world-views and tactics.

Let's focus our energies on fighting the real enemies - neoliberlism and imperialism (and capitalism itself??).

Well, that's what I reckon anyway.

More good than harm even, not more harm than good.

Clearly it's ok to constructively criticise these people though.

£35k would be nice to have. But it's a bit fat and clumsy though. Look at people like the ISM in Palestine. They go in there and do stuff the UN officers wouldn't dare to do, dispite their lumbering great danger-money salaries.