The good news is, the loathsome Mail on Sunday hit piece motivated a lot of people to give money to the charitable trust that funds many UK food banks. Yaboosucks Daily Mail!
The largest provider of food banks in Britain has seen a huge surge in donations after a newspaper article criticising the charity sparked a social media funding drive.
The Trussell Trust says it is “overwhelmed by the public’s generosity” as a new appeal has now topped £38,000, a rise of well over £35,000 since before the article was published.
The Help Crack UK Hunger campaign launched at the start of the year and by 19th April had raised roughly £2,000, with 238 donations made. The total stands at £38,962 at the time of writing, after 3,540 donations.
So there, and fuck you.
Many of those donating on the website used their comments and tweets to cite the Mail on Sunday article as the reason behind their donation:
I donated to @trusselltrust food-bank charity (a bit less than @mark_haddondid). See his/my timeline as to the Daily Mail reason for it.
@trusselltrust excellent response & my thanks for all you & the 30,000 volunteers do to ease the pain & suffering of those most in need.
I’d love to think the Mail on Sunday intended that result, but…no.
Funny, huh? I’m so glad that the Daily Mail’s mean-spirited, contemptuous attempt at “investigative journalism” had the opposite effect of what the conservatives (in the US sense) wanted.
It’s sort of like how, when Christians announce a boycott of a movie, it sells way more tickets. “The Last Temptation of Christ” probably would have gone unnoticed by the public if not for the Christians exhorting everyone to avoid it. I can’t find it now, but within the last few days, I ran across an account of when this guy’s student union was showing “Life of Brian.” The local Baptists turned out with signs and yelling (a la Westboro Baptist Church) in front of the student union – the students had to run a gantlet to get in! The first showing at 7 PM sold out, yet there were still people in line. So they showed it again at 9 PM. Again, sold out. The guy in charge of the projector finally got to go home at 2 AM – it was the best attended movie the student union had ever hosted. Thanks, Baptists!
I guess it kind of blows when you realize that society hates you enough to do the opposite of whatever you recommend…
I believe the donations have topped £50k now. Which actually doesn’t sound all that much, so i did a little maths…
The story reported a family of four were given 3 days worth of food which cost about £40. Assuming 3 meals a day per person, I reckon that’s about 90,000 meals the Mail on Sunday (not actually the same paper as the Daily Mail, though they share a website) have helped the Trussel Trust provide.
I hope that knowledge makes the editor choke on his Easter egg (probably a really expensive one costing about £40 or something).
This instance is an example of the Duc de Rochefoucald being right when he said that there are times when it is more degrading not to be fooled than to be fooled.
Save some of the disdain for the Mail on Sunday who actually perpetrated the fraud. Blame the Daily Heil for their own failures.
Whoops. I keep forgetting that the two are separate. I tweaked the references.
The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday may be nominally separate, but they share the same owner, the same Editor-in-Chief and the same website.
Two cheeks, one arsehole.