Well, Karaoke, I see where you're coming from, but surely people should be allowed to leave their money to whichever individuals, charities or animals as they please. If the State were to start dictating the rules of legacies (on top of the 40% of inheritance tax which very many people's estates are liable for when they die), then we really are into the realms of the Orwellian, Big Brother world.
But you touch on a much more difficult issue when you refer to the millions of poverty-stricken people elsewhere in the world. How many of us are about to spend a few or many hundreds of pounds on ourselves and our families this coming Christmas? Of course we are, because this is family, the gathering together of family, the reinforcement of family bonds - all very worthy and understandable motives.
Yet of course every pound we spend on ourselves is one which we just might (if we were high-minded enough) have given to some African, or other, Charity instead and saved some innocent child in Darfur or elsewhere. But where does one stop and to what extent should we feel guilty about anything we ever spend on ourselves?
Answers in not more than 20 words on a postcard please! My apologies if this is touching on the heavy - I have no easy answers ... tho', come the crunch, I put my own family first.
Tony.
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