Recent News

Birmingham's anti-chugger law
and
Charities and agencies given 60,000 penalty points for street fundraising breaches

Martin Clunes calls man a "pussy" in debate on chuggers

Alan Titchmarsh Show 11th Oct 2013

Notice the audience vote near the end.

EveryChild breaks the rules

Two EveryChild chuggers strayed today in Cheltenham. I snapped them between the Beechwood Arcade and Paddy Power around 1138. This is outside the agreed chugging zone.



Only had a cheap phone camera available. I reported them to the Council. Nothing happened for at least 10 minutes while I watched - the chuggers carried on the usual antics of silly dances and waves. There were another 3 of the same brand of chuggers in the official Chugging zone.

Shelter Chugger breaks several rules?

Catches some behaviour that may be against the rules on obstruction and "cornering" people sat on seats.

Harassing or not?

Very short (fair use) extract from the BBC Inside Out SE programme on Chuggers 7/1/13. Shows an interview with a chugger saying he doesn't harass people while his collegue clearly *does* harass someone in the background. Since Everychild knew they were on camera, you'd expect squeaky clean behaviour from the team! Later on in the programme, it comes out that the non-harassing interviewee made zero sign-ups that day!

Birmingham to ban chuggers completely

Birmingham is planning a by-law to ban chuggers according to this article. It's the beginning of the end for this discredited fundraising technique!

Friends of the Earth flout the rules

What is it about environmental charities? Just over a week ago, I reported misbehaviour by Greenpeace and today Friends of the Earth were committing an almost identical offence around 15:26 (which was when I reported them to the Council) This time, the chugger was about 10m further out of the chugger zone than the Greenpeace one and I got much better pictures of him at work. To be fair, the two girls seem to be enjoying his sales patter. As the Council promised they'd act immediately, I hung around to watch the action. It wasn't quite what I expected. At 15:39 two fairly cool, confident twenty-something guys joined the girls and the chugger and cheerful conversation continued for about a minute before the chugger suddenly left in the direction of the official chugging zone. I'm not sure if the two other guys were just friends of the girls or if they were plain clothes reps from FoE smoothly extracting the erring chugger from the situation. Or maybe two guys "rescuing" the "damsels in distress" and trying to chat them up?