I'm fairly sure the author Charles Dickens was sceptical when it came to organised charities. He thought the first call on money donated was for the charity's supposed expenses. And I'm fairly sure too that a reasonably recent survey of major charities showed only about 10% of the money they collected actually went to helping people. The rest went on wages for themselves and administrative costs. It would not surprise me. Certainly, watching the charities in my area I have come to the conclusion that the welfare of those in need of help comes way second to the welfare of those employed by the charity. For instance, I don't think administrative talent is hereditary, so mother-daughter management teams causes my eyebrow to raise. Now I'm sure there are some genuine charities out there who really do want to help and don't use other people's misfortunes to line their own pockets. So, how about this - to be a registered charity an organisation must pay no more than minimum wage to any of its employees. That should weed out a lot of the profiteers. As one man who genuinely wanted to help once said There's A Lot Of Money In Poverty.

A while back an acquaintance asked me to help shift a table from her flat to ground floor of her towerblock. Why not. It would get my good deed of the day done before lunch. Now, a lot of people would show their appreciation with a five dollar bill - less than the cost of a pint of beer these days. I'd decided to reject the offer. It's not a good deed if you get paid. But there was no offer. I think she'd mentioned I wasn't the first person she'd asked that morning to help move that table. Maybe the others had helped her move tables before.

There have been a lot of exiles on my radio recently -Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Lebanon. The thing is that many of them don't represent opinion or feeling in their home countries. They are not drawn from the massive columns of refugees crowded at border fleeing war or an oppressive regime with all their possessions balanced on their heads. They are mainly from the most privileged sections of society and in some cases have had to leave their country because they were involved in trying to reinstall a nasty right-wing regime. A number of Iranian exiles were on the radio lamenting the supposed ceasefire in Iran. They wanted the airstrikes to continue until the Islamic regime is ousted. Easy for them to demand. Back in Iran there were certainly people who initially welcomed the attacks. Then they realised that the American plan is to free them by trying to kill them. Now they are not so keen. I wish the radio would stop giving these privileged, usually politically extremist, exiles so much of a platform.

I just heard a crime drama in which Tyneside had apparently become part of Yorkshire. Not a single Geordie accent. I know not everyone in the area has a discernible Geordie accent, but no-one at all of them. Maybe that was one of the reason the London-based producer of The Black Museum, Harry Towers, failed in the early 1950s to interest the BBC in broadcasting the programme. Another reason might be the scriptwriters' bizarre habit of putting American words into the mouths of British characters. No-one in London would have spoken about sidewalks, wrenches or streetcars. I was also baffled as to why Scotland Yard would be involved in investigating an 1857 murder in Glasgow. But I do know that trial would not have involved only 12 jurors. So, a lack of research may also have put the BBC off buying the drama. Even the involvement of Orson Welles in the project counted for nothing so far as the BBC was concerned. My wee brother tells me the programme, set in the UK and first broadcast in America, was recorded in Australia using local actors.

I heard two writers on the radio discussing the extra barriers they face when it came to getting published due to their humble "working class" origins. Certainly folk from privileged backgrounds seem to have an easier time. I think both attributed their success to their own talent. Maybe so. But maybe not entirely. One was black and the other a transsexual. Two easy checkboxes for publishers who want to claim some diversity credentials.