Charitable Britons Not Exactly Jumping For Joy At Promise Of Patronising Letter From Junior Minister Of Paperclips

+ Citizen transaction detected +

The government’s suggestion that some junior minister’s secretary might post a patronising form letter to members of the public who make large donations to charity has somehow failed to generate the hoped-for dancing in the streets, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude admitted this evening.

“On the one hand, people seem to appreciate that simply having cash deducted from every transaction they make frees them from the onerous responsibility of having to actually think for themselves about which charities they might wish to support,” he said. “Unfortunately, however, people seem to have noticed that a suitable-for-framing letter from a government minister congratulating them on their generosity rather implies that the government will be keeping complete records of every single transaction they make, right down to which cash machines they use, and for some reason they find this rather irksome.”

Charities have already welcomed the scheme, albeit with some reservations.

“We think the scheme doesn’t quite go far enough,” said John Low, the rather well-paid chief executive of some strange and hitherto unnecessary entity calling itself the ‘Charities Aid Foundation’. “What we would greatly prefer to see is a scheme whereby everybody’s wages are automatically paid direct to us, and we can then opt to make the occasional one-off donation of a small percentage of their earnings to people whenever a rare mood of philanthropic benevolence briefly takes us.”