Children shouldn’t be expected to receive sponsorship for child’s play

Can there be anyone curmudgeonly enough to take against Save the Children’s Den Day, a heartwarming event? – actually, make that an entire week, 29 May to 6th June – in which little children are ‘being sponsored to transform their sofa, school desk or even a boring cardboard box into magical super dens. And the money they raise will help to save lives around the world.’ What could be nicer and more harmless than to inculcate philanthropy in the young? Especially to help children like little Annie Mae in the Philippines, on the Save the Children website, made homeless in a typhoon and presumably obliged to make a den of her own, though not at all for fun.

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Druin Burch

Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

Actually, I do think this kind of thing is pernicious, and not just because it’s the kind of thing my children’s school is horribly likely to take up.