A 'feel good' wash to go with the green wash!

Yeah and maybe some of the money will go to a food bank so we can maintain the status quo and do nothing to SOLVE the fact that many citizens do not have, nor can afford a home in BC in the 21st century!

What say you 'Progress Board', how is that progress?

Invite homeless into your house instead do-gooders!

Now that would be admirable!

Why not treat homeless as visitors if we treat visitors better?

Oh wait, 'visitors' are those that have money to visit!

Home for the Games offers a chance for make a difference

Just wanted to respond to some of your cynical posters:

I'm the founder of Home for the Games. Four months ago my roommates and I considered renting our house out for big bucks and skipping town for the Games. Instead, we decided to make a difference. We and other citizens have devoted hundreds of hours to creating a way for hosts to divert Olympic home stay revenue to charities that make a real difference in people's lives. We're doing it because, like the Tyee, we happen to care, and feel that action is more effective than ranting.

To Bob: Your concerns about shelters are valid. But check out our charity beneficiaries before you attack. Covenant House helps kids who have nowhere else to go. They give them food, shelter, and then help them gain the skills to avoid a life on the streets. The Streetohome contribution will go to a project that houses mentally ill people currently on the street, and gives them access to on-site treatment and services so they can move on. We're not saving the world. But we hope we're helping in a small way.

To Zalm: I'm sorry you are cynical. We all have that choice, and my friends and I decided to make a positive contribution with the energy we had. I wish you well in any contributions you make.

to Alive: You're right in one respect: We're do-gooders, just trying to make a difference, and our efforts to reach out, to engage and to help have been immensely rewarding! Thanks for your encouragement for people to donate directly to registered charities. You can do so by contacting Covenant House and Streetohome Foundation directly.

Oh, and some good news! My partner Omar's room was just booked by a woman from Ucluelet, who wants to bring her daughter to the Games. She loved the idea of sharing our space, and was pleased half the money would go to charity instead of an expensive estate agent. We can't wait to meet her.

GIve it a rest

My goodness, some of you really need to give your head a shake. Vancouver has a huge homeless problem and this fellow offers a very inventive solution and all you guys can do is rip him apart.

I don't even live in Vancouver, but yet I donate some money to the Union Gospel Mission, because I used to volunteer there during my university days. Somehow I always felt that it was never good enough to whine and bitch about life's problems and that I should take some action and be a responsible citizen.

Why not just quit your bitching, nitpicking, get off your ass, and give a little effort. Be part of the solution, not part of the whiny bitching problem.

Any system can be subverted by bad will

A couple of my friends were asked by their landlords to move out during the Olympics so their basement suite can be rented out to rich visitors. They refused. Then they got evicted forever on grounds that the landlords "needed it for the family." Sadly, this is totally legal and there is no way to ensure that the suite is in fact used by family later.

While I congratulate you on your efforts in trying to turn something bad into something decent, I really hope that it doesn't encourage any landlords to act as my friends' did.

To Charles

You feel I attacked your ideas, by me suggesting a more sound and long term way to help. I wish you all the best, and it's a great idea! How about a little background on myself. I'm your target to raise money for (maybe). I've been Disabled for years, I've run a Disability support group for over 10 years for free, I belonged to a provincial antipoverty network. May I be so bold as to say I know a lot about poverty. Having had this front row seat for all these years. I'm classed as PWD with welfare, my medical bills are in the $100k plus range. I don't use food banks, nor any other form of non-profits. Yet poverty, I know is a Multi Billion Dollar Business. You know the executives of the non-profits you give to will take 3% of your $750,000 donation or $22,500 as part of their executive compensation package, plus an unknown amount for their expense accounts. Funny the head guy for the boys scouts in the USA makes $589,000 plus expenses every year, its 3% of the total budget. Non profits don't make public any of their books in Canada, that I could ever find.
I've gone back and reread your story. You sound like a bunch of smart people. Please spend the money wisely, don't blindly hand it over, you have 6 months to come up with a great idea. Here is a common thing poor people deal with, my 14 year Daughter wants to become a Doctor, its just eats me up knowing I can't help her. Or how about that the welfare Dental plan is not honoured by most Dentists in BC and there are thousands of people in pain everyday. Seniors have no Dental plan, and the working poor are suffering. Did you know Canada spends less on poverty issuses than the USA. We spend 1% of GDP and in Europe and a lot of other countries they spend as much as 4.5% of their GDP. I really hope you all the best. We could end poverty if every church member and every nonprofit stopped and made it their mandate to end poverty.
End of Rant.

Masking the subterfuge

You don't really think this is any kind of solution, do you?

This is the continual kind of complicity that only serves to further legitimize and prop up the Campbell government's regressive and brutal social policy.....allowing it to continue to flourish under the co-opted guise and short-term vision of "pretend" solutions.

Should human beings have to depend on the whim of chance and charity for shelter?

This is just another slapdash distraction that just further delays any kind of genuine long-term solution.

duplication

Charles Montgomery:
Of course you do not get my point!
Every Tom, Dick,and Harry starts up their own charity because they want to feel important.
They are duplicating many already existing charites and confusing the issue.
Look up how many organizations are competing for your dollar to help starving kids overseas for example?
Each one has to have its own organization transportation , distribution and yes, overhead!
just so some person can feel he is important.
an Idealist would select the best present organization and quietly support it,
But there is no glamour in that is there?

Duplication!

Sorry I have to keep adding to this. Talk about Duplication. The small town of Port Hardy now has the Sally Ann. It cost all of you $250k to just put their offices into a leased building, plus another I hear $108k per year operating expenses, yet the man who bought the building paid just $169k just months before, and on the top floor he put in a hostel with rooms starting at $24 per night. They put in a homeless shelter in another building cost $91.32 per mat per night, plus all the refit costs, all in a town with over a 50% vacancy rate and rents there start at $395 for a nice place too, remember it cost $2,700 per month to keep one person in a homeless shelter for a month. The town aready had 2 soup kitchens, AA meetings in a few places, now one in the sally ann, plus a real good one is a local church just bought a large hotel, its putting in rooms for the disabled, suppling 2 meals a day in there new kitchens, plus meeting rooms, coffee bar etc etc etc. They already had a food bank in town and still do. Mental health workers moved in to the sally ann building, but still maintained their building and offices one block away. This just goes on and on and on. Duplacation is such a common thing, and why is it that in a town like Port Hardy with a vacancy rate of over 50%, why is it that there is even one single homeless person, our leaders meet all the definitions of insanity. Oh well I'm Disabled so what would I know, and I'm just to low of a victim in their minds to ever be asked anything, LOL.

this article and the

this article and the comments are both very informative. Learned a lot. The idea is certainly well intentioned. If it succeeds, will help ease the situation.. Hope it works out, but Bob there seems to have a point about the business and profits of poverty. Sounds like at the worst could be exploitive at the best well intentioned, but in need of better management.

a measured response

First, I mince no words in saying I've been and remain a strong opponent of the Olympics coming to Vancouver since the idea and bid process were floated and launched by the NDP in the 90's. All you NDP hacks lambasting this do-good citizen for not solving all the world's problems and complicitly supporting the Campbell government via his plan, shame. You wanna blame anyone for the Games, look to the beloved Glen Clark. Carole James is on record just last week as saying she's "a big booster of the Games, but...." Kathy Corrigan, much the same.

You can bet that if this were an NDP pet project under a socialist government, the left would see Montgomery as a Christ-like figure and a PR tool with which to sell the Games.

The important gauge for me is what the people on the homelessness front lines feel about Montgomery's idea. From what I've read and seen on TV reports, they love it and welcome it, and that's good enough for me. He's part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The poor are going to be hammered further into submission by these Games and any practical solution any citizen comes up with to assist in lessening that blow should be viewed as positive.

The Tyee also endorses the idea, and one of the reasons I read this magazine regularly is precisely because it has its political head screwed on correctly and is not Canwest Global.

Montgomery doesn't pretend to have big solutions, he doesn't fly a political flag. He and his friends just want to help in some way, and yes, make a little extra pocket change in the process. So what. What are you doing to help the homeless during the Games? Besides posting vitriolic comments to the Tyee and joining one of the "free speech zone" protests?

Helping BIG Olympic/VANOC pockets get even BIGGER

"He and his friends just want to help in some way, and yes, make a little extra pocket change in the process. So what. What are you doing to help the homeless during the Games? "

There's the problem in a nutshell right there.

"during the Games"

Embedded in those three words is the acknowledgement that the Games and the BIG pockets behind them have put the lives of the homeless at even higher risk. And what is your solution? To further enable the Games...and their BIG pockets ...by helping more people to actively support and prop up the Games by providing rooms.

Let's face it - you can't both oppose the Games and at the same time make them more accessible to more people ...at least without being viewed as a hypocrite. You have made your choice and you have chosen to further facilitate the Olympic agenda over the real need to end homelessness.

Ms. James, as ever, has one foot in and one foot out - someone should tell her you just get dizzy that way, going round and round in circles.

After the Olympics are over, perhaps, those supporting this idea could report in, and tell us then, how the homeless are faring. ( You need to re-read Bob Watts first comment about how the donations will be eaten up. His idea is a better one - that's if you are really interested in genuinely addressing long-term housing.)

I won't mince words either, I see this as a clearly enabling idea, that allows Gordon Campbell to further obscure the damage caused to the homeless by the Olympics and that also allows him to effectively use the goodwill of others to facilitate and promote the very thing ( The Olympic Elephant in the room) that is voraciously stealing vital funds and vital time away from the dire need to find real solutions to homelessness....and to act on them immediately.

This is why little ever changes.

Too many people with one shoe in and one shoe out, continuously propping up the status quo.

Stop participating in the madness.

Einstein said it best.

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
— Albert Einstein

lynn

Streethome, Covenant House, i.e., those organizations on the front lines, support the idea. I'm sure most shelter workers on the downtown east side do, too. Left-wing mayor Robertson does too, among other left-wing advocates.

These shelter organizations have one thing you don't seem to: a street level, pragmatic understanding of the immediate need for help, and they'll take it any way it comes. They don't have time for ideological purity. It's nice to wax anarcho-idealistic and speak in high absolutes and either/or, black/white terms... but the world doesn't always work that way.

"Enabling" the Games? Are you serious? The Games are way beyond being enabled and there's nothing you or anyone can do to change that. The Olympics are coming, like it or not. What to do? You can accept that reality and try and help some homeless people via initiatives like this (which I think is a rather subversive act), or you can stand in the way of a bit of daily bread that is badly needed at any given time of the year. I'm not saying don't protest the Olympics (I'll get back to this point in a few sentences).

I want you to go down to Streethome and Covenant House and ask them why they are supporting this idea, and tell them why you think they are enabling Gordon Campbell and his Olympics by accepting donations for their homeless clients from Montgomery et al. I wonder you have the courage or pragmatic imagination to do such a thing. Have you ever set foot in a shelter before?

There will be plenty of venues within which to protest the Olympics, protest its assault on taxpayers and the poor, but, friend, this homestay program is not one of those venues. Pick your battles wisely. Montgomery is not the enemy, nor is Streethome or Covenant House. I admire your heart and your passion. I'm on your side of the political fence. I just think we should re-direct our protest to actual targets, rather than people who aim to do good by generating donations for the homeless via the Games.

Wake up

The Olympics are coming whether you like it or not. So we might as well show the world a positive Vancouver who is at least trying to make a difference.
I haven't signed up to have someone in my home but I am seriously thinking it would be a good opportunity to share my privileged lifestyle (not rich but comfortable) with someone from out of town and share with others that are not as privileged as I am. I am not trying to cure homelessness and there will be no cure before the Olympics and probably not for a long time after.
I am willing to pay a little to have someone do the footwork for me as I don't know where to begin and if maybe the little bit of money that goes to the homelessness situation helps someone a little I would like to help. I don't have a cure for homelessness but sitting back complaining about what is not being done isn't helping either. I don't think we have to worry about this being a venue for gouging landlords, anyone who evicts their tenants won't be donating half their money to help homelessness. Complaining and protesting isn't going to make the Olympics go away, so relax, enjoy sharing your community with the world and maybe donate a little money to those less privileged.

Self-defeating complicity

"I'm on your side of the political fence. I just think we should re-direct our protest to actual targets,

I'm afraid political fences don't much interest me any longer. Standing completely outside the corrall is the only thing that will change things now. That is what I am trying to say but I guess we disagree in that regard. You have mis-read me if you think I would support the wishy-washy Gregor or the equally complicit Ms. James.

Again, that is what I am trying to say, we must refuse corporate "trinkets/small pocket change" tactics that not only involve us in the corruption, but allow the corruption to further flourish. Our complicity must end. To not participate in the corrupt circus, is the only way real change will happen.

Take a stand by standing outside.

Sorry, but when you are renting rooms for the Games ("making money "via the Games"), you might as well be selling tickets.

The problem is, while one hand gives out a small temporary donation that in the end solves little towards alleviating homelessness, the other hand through its complicity destroys any possibility of a real and "meaningful" long-term solution. An actual effective solution. Instead, you play right into the PR strategy of Campbell and VANOC. They will be MOST grateful that you are helping to remove the homeless off the streets and into shelters for their sacred two week period.... especially grateful that they are removed from the sight of the watching world....and MOST grateful that you are helping to keep their "best place on earth" myth alive and breathing for the world cameras.

In the view of Ann Green:

"The Olympics are coming whether you like it or not. So we might as well show the world a positive Vancouver who is at least trying to make a difference."

So, yes, up the positivity, folks ( and with it the Orwellian invisible chocolate rations) and help the Campbell Liberals to further prop up their lies.

They and VANOC will be ever grateful.

But when THEIR BIG Olympics bill must be paid by us for decades to come, draining vital funds for social infra-structure such as HOMELESSNESS for decades to come, remember, your short-term plan played a part in renting rooms to Olympic supporters, thus facilitating an event that is eating up our future and the potential for genuine long-term social infra-structure solutions.

Do you not see the irony and the long-term self-defeating lunacy of this plan?

But the Olympics are coming.

The people of BC voted yes for the Olympics and no matter how we feel, they are coming. I am not an intellectual who over thinks things. I just want to enjoy the Olympic experience ( no I cannot afford tickets but I can commend the athletes from a distance) and enjoy the party atmosphere. Maybe help out a traveler from afar that wants to enjoy the Olympics or watch their child or mate compete.At this point my renting out a room will make no difference to our debt load, or change anything that is going to happen, I am not housing the homeless so I am not hiding anyone during the Olympics and I don't believe the goal for this money is to be used only the few weeks of the Olympics to hide our underprivileged . i am hoping it will expand my Olympic experience and maybe someone who stays with me. I refuse to dwell on the negative and want to just enjoy cause it's coming anyway.

Collateral damage

The contrarians are telling us that it's better to have as many homeless out on the streets during the Olympics, so that greater their number the better the hope is that their war against Gordon Campbell will be advanced - due to greater visibility of pitiful plight.

So the 'pawns' suffering is good for 'the cause'.

A typical justification derived from military and other dogmatic strategies.

"United States Department of Defense definition collateral damage — Unintentional or incidental injury or damage to persons or objects that would not be lawful military targets in the circumstances ruling at the time. Such damage is not unlawful so long as it is not excessive in light of the overall military advantage anticipated from the attack."

To paraphrase Bob Dylan:
"He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game."

As you might have guessed; I think this is a commendable idea.

realisticman, What? We are

realisticman, What? We are talking about 'Home for the games' by housing a visitor to our city we are not taking any homeless people off the streets. This idea is not about a war against Campbell, it's not even a small battle at this point. I might understand your point of view if you spoke in plain English, I don't mind being talked down to, I just want to understand you. I'm not highly educated but I am opinionated. thanks

Dear Ann,

I read and agree with both of your previous posts; "Wake Up' and 'But the Olympics are coming'. I think that Home for the Games is a commendable idea and I am saddened that cynics who seem obsessed with opposition to the Olympics, and all the politicians, would subject any homeless person to continued discomfort because of their political agenda.

I agree with you, "we might as well show the world a positive Vancouver".

Dear realisticman Thanks

Dear realisticman

Thanks for the clarification, I didn't get that from your Collateral damage. I didn't know who's game he was a pawn in. I am the person who gives money to the disadvantaged on the street, maybe it is drug money but who am I to judge. maybe it's food money. We could let people starve and then the Government would have to step up and so something quickly. I don't understand protesting something that cannot be changed. Everyone else seems to be against the Home for the Games.

No, you got it wrong,

No, you got it wrong, realisticman.

Who would blame the homeless for seeking shelter during the Games.

But the reality is, which you coyly don't say, is that the homeless ARE suffering.

Right now.

Everyday. Day after day.

They will continue to suffer after this contrived two week Olympic grace period is over.

They will continue to suffer for years and decades to come, precisely because of the Olympics, and precisely because of how public funds meant for social infra-structure have been "diverted", some would say stolen, to fund private projects for special friends of the BC Liberals.

If you don't mind, r-man, I'll use your military metaphor:

Yes, talk about collateral damage. Make that BC Liberal collateral damage. Come to think it was less collateral damage and more a planned and intentional strategy of....war, launched like a cold-blooded military campaign against our public resources and assets and yes, against the poor....who were just in the way of corporate steamroller politics. Must have all been in the fine/invisible print of the New Era of privatization, remember that PR scam? Here IT is in bold print:THE HIGHEST CHILD POVERTY RATE IN CANADA, YEAR AFTER YEAR. EVER INCREASING NUMBERS OF POOR. EVER INCREASING HOMELESSNESS.

Food banks and shelters are meant as temporary solutions. As emergency responses.

Not a way of life for human beings.

Sad thing is, the temporary, the slapdash, has become firmly entrenched in this province because strong social infra-structure doesn't matter, nor is it a priority with this government or those who support it. They only need us for our public funds, our tax dollars to fund their private projects....and of course, to bail them out ad infinitum.

So now big international charities thrive in this province and people don't. It's the same kind of system that we see in the US where jails and the warehousing of people have become big business.

What is needed is real homes for the homeless.

Right now.

Genuine long-term solutions.

A chance at a real life.

Not more games. Not more distractions.

wayfarer referred to this Home for the Games plan (that has cleverly co-opted the goodwill of people while Gordo and VANOC cheer you on...that should be a clue, by the way), as "subversive".

Now that is just funny.

Subversive....as in undermining, disruptive, revolutionary?

Ummmm....not quite, folks. No cigar I'm afraid.

By the way, this is going to be a long war if this is your strategy. My god, the enemy is cheering you on.

So in my best Groucho Marx imitation, cigar between teeth:

The secret word is "subvert".

As in: Who is subverting who?

A small step, perhaps

I did say, "continued discomfort". Is that coy?

Gordo will soon be gone, perhaps this charitable idea will live on.

Lynn, rhetorically, you say, "Who would blame the homeless for seeking shelter during the Games."

Perhaps you ask 'Who would stop the homeless for seeking shelter during the Games?'. You wouldn't, would you?

Perchance

Quote:

"Perhaps you ask 'Who would stop the homeless for seeking shelter during the Games?'. You wouldn't, would you?"

Nope, I wouldn't.

But I would refuse to be part of, or facilitate in any way, the circus that put them there.

On a cruel tightrope walk

Where they drift

Between the street and the shelter.

That isn't a life.

You write, realisticman:

"Gordo will soon be gone, perhaps this charitable idea will live on."

"Perhaps", "perhaps", how easily it trips off the tongue.....

Then again, "perhaps not".

A desperate enough life on the streets without having to depend on the smarmy charity of chance and the smug benevolence of perhaps.

Again-

The short-term whim of charity is no replacement for strong and effective long-term social policy and infra-structure.

Again -

Food banks and shelters are meant as temporary solutions. As emergency responses.

Not as a way of life for human beings.

To sleep on the streets, perchance to dream
Of something better
Than mere shelter for the night
Ay, there's the rub."

Less Privileged-Disadvantaged?

Hey thats me! Or is it? I fully understand that 75% of the homeless are not on welfare, for an unknown reason to me. Campbell is forking over $55k per homeless person per year, is that in any way wise? So I'm on welfare as a Disabled person, I sadly qualify for an extra food allowance, a transit subsidy. So am I poor? I live well below the poverty line! Is the Sally Ann ringing those bells to make my life better? LOL!!! Wow that bugs me, non-profits with fat government contracts, begging on TV, begging in malls, begging by mail, if you die leave all your estate to the Sally Ann, beg beg beg all in my name, and I see non of it. Do I want the cash they are raising in my name? Well hell ya, I'm not stupid just Physicaly Disabled! They could ask welfare to take the cash and spread it around equally to every disabled person on the welfares list. Again to simple an idea. I'm doing OK really, reason, I don't smoke, don't drink, don't take drugs, don't take holidays, don't eat out, buy only second hand, etc etc etc. Damn! I use to give food to others on welfare, then a light went on, hey they get the same as I do! Now I only give my time and help with paper work. So a single person on welfare gets $235 for a food allowance and if they smoke 30 packs of cigarettes per month at $8 per pack that $240 per month. Hey they need a food bank! Lucky cigarettes are taxed at 90%, so the government in fact only gave out about $25 in tax dollars as a welfare cheque, the rest was cigarette taxes reclycled into a welfare payments, YES? I met a Disable person that spent their cheque in 3 days this month. Got to admit many people are on welfare for a good reason, their minds don't work. Today I went on my scooter and picked up trash at a local school, to repay my debt to society, in the best way I can with my Disabilities. My child caught a fish for dinner tonight, it was really good. I was once a business man with more cash than I needed, then illness, no insurance (like so many) life savings $100k gone in months, then to welfare. It was horror at first, with the Campbell cuts to welfare, I'm lucky I was not one of the over 10,000 deaths caused by the welfare cuts, if I din't have a child then I think death would have been a more humane way to go. I've always felt jealous that my dog has had the SPCA to look out for her well being, yet the poor have what??? Things have changed for me for some reason and I must say welfare now is OK, I don't have what I want but I do have what I need. As for the Sally Ann ringing bells this christmas, what can I do, some of the poor and rich think the Sally Ann is the greatest thing ever. LOL. No I'm not less Privileged nor Disadvantaged, Campbell does not own my soul and there is a warm place awaiting him in the next life, and its not a tax break!!!

Hey Bob, you are privileged

Hey Bob, you are privileged you have everything you need. You will never have everything you want, no one does. The more you have the more you want. I have been financially poor but I have always had more than most. We will never find enough people to help others for free, so therefore we have the Sally Ann and Home for the Games. It's not a perfect world but a good positive attitude helps

The Salvation Army

A fiend of mine lost an eye during battle in New Guinea with Australian Forces in 1944. When he dragged himself back to base camp the help he received there in the jungle was from the Salvation Army. He never forgot that.

Here in Vancouver they continue to help those in need and their Belkin House is one of the best facilities, right downtown. They take in women and their children, convicts attempting reintegration and the homeless.

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-conflicts-periods/ww2/salvos1.htm

"New Guinea
24 January 1943-31 December 1944
Disease thrived on New Guinea. Malaria was the greatest debilitator, but dengue fever, dysentery, scrub typhus, and a host of other tropical sicknesses awaited unwary soldiers in the jungle. Scattered, tiny coastal settlements dotted the flat malarial north coastline, but inland the lush tropical jungle swallowed men and equipment.

About 13,000 Japanese troops perished during the terrible fighting, but Allied casualties were also heavy; 8,500 men fell in battle (5,698 of them Australians) and 27,000 cases of malaria were reported, mainly because of shortages of medical supplies.

The terrain was a commander's nightmare because it fragmented the deployment of large formations. On the north shore a tangled morass of large mangrove swamps slowed overland movement. Monsoon rains of eight or ten inches a day turned torpid streams into impassable rivers. There were no roads or railways, and supply lines were often native tracks, usually a dirt trail a yard or so wide tramped out over the centuries through the jungle growth. Downpours quickly dissolved such footpaths into calf-deep mud that reduced soldiers to exhausted automatons stumbling over the glue-like ground. Fed by the frequent downpours, the lush rain-forest jungle afforded excellent concealment to stubborn defenders and made coordinated overland envelopments nearly impossible. Infantrymen carrying sixty pounds of weapons, equipment, and pack staggered along in temperatures reaching the mid-90s with humidity levels to match."

The Salvation Army do not require anyone to have any particular religious affiliation, nor do they force any religious beliefs on anyone, they assist any and all in need.

The Salvation Army

Kept my grandmother and my months-old father in food while my grandfather rode the rails looking for work and sending money home when he could.

But not even they have found homes for the 2400 homeless in Vancouver at the 2009 homeless count. I wonder why not?

R'man, Lynn's got your number. All the reminiscences in the world won't wash away a drop of the blood that stains your fingers.

Jesus had a lot to say to the rich young ruler who sought entry into heaven (Luke 18:18-30). You've got a lot of balls to invoke the name of the Salvation Army in your cause. I should think someone who probably spent more on his last holiday than SA's General Commissioner Glen Shepherd made all year for directing the thousands of people and billions of dollars in this economically-run charity would be more respectful of others' ill fortune.