Scale errors
May. 9th, 2015 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fivemackThe total amount Race For Life has ever raised would pay the NHS's drugs bill for a fortnight.
The total amount Comic Relief has raised in thirty years would pay Britain's housing benefit for three weeks.
The total amount ever raised by the Disaster Emergency Committee is about a month's budget for the DFID.
Those are the kind of statistics it's worth having in mind when listening to talk of the Big Society; replacing single specialised pieces of taxpayer funding would require initiatives as big as the biggest ones we have. There's not the slightest hope of reliably getting three times as much donated annually to the task of funding the library service as was donated to the relief efforts for the 2004 tsunami, and that's what libraries in the UK cost.
The total amount Comic Relief has raised in thirty years would pay Britain's housing benefit for three weeks.
The total amount ever raised by the Disaster Emergency Committee is about a month's budget for the DFID.
Those are the kind of statistics it's worth having in mind when listening to talk of the Big Society; replacing single specialised pieces of taxpayer funding would require initiatives as big as the biggest ones we have. There's not the slightest hope of reliably getting three times as much donated annually to the task of funding the library service as was donated to the relief efforts for the 2004 tsunami, and that's what libraries in the UK cost.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-20 01:35 pm (UTC)It dwarfs the annual running cost of ParkRun (~£1m-£2m) which is probably the best value public health initiative in the UK.
It's about the amount required to start a loss making streaming company (Spotify, $1.5bn), but not a taxi company (Uber, $12.5bn).
It's about half that required to start Facebook ($2.4bn).