Interesting article in todays Guardian (under the ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses link to UN queried’ article)
Thought this made for very interesting reading too..... till I reached the end.....
______________________________________________________________________A Whitehall think tank is recommending that religion is abolished as the basis for charity tax concessions - just as home secretary David Blunkett seeks a new, stronger definition of religion as part of his drive to outlaw incitement to racial hatred.
But Mr Blunkett’s advisers are unaware of the conclusions of the performance and innovation unit (PIU), a Cabinet Office think tank headed by Geoff Mulgan, who is also the prime ministers’s special adviser on strategy. Its report on charities is sponsored by another close colleague of thee prime minister, Lady Morgan, formerly one of his political secretaries.
The PIU is set to recommend that charitable status is only accorded organisations that meet a test of ‘public benefit’. In future a charity would have to deliver benefits to the community at large not just people associated with it.
Charity law is mainly case law resting on three headings: education, religion and community good. Because of ambiguities in defining what constitutes religious observance, the charities commission has been forced into embarrassing discrimination between such groups as white witches and Odin worshippers and more mainstream faiths.
It is understood that the team of civil servants and voluntary sector experts considering how to change the low would not make their new definition retrospective. Groups that have gained charity status as religious bodies, which include the Church of England as well as Islamic and other non-Christian denominations, would not be affected. Any new religious organisations, Christian or otherwise, would have to pass the public benefit test before they qualified for tax concessions........
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damn, who made that stupid rule up....... and it was all going so well in the article up to that point. Seems a bit stupid to me that they are willing to overlook misleading charities that are already set up and are only targeting the new ones. Doesn’t make much sense. The Watchtower being a registered charity is one of the most dishonest things I have come across in the org - how can they call themselves a charity - in what way do they benefit the public? Answers on a postcard please....... I’m not expecting many postcards......