Evening Standard labels have-a-go heroes as charity workers, not chuggers

Finance | Tania Mason | 19 Oct 2010

The Evening Standard, long a vocal critic of street fundraising in London, was forced to change its tune last week after two of the robbers who foiled the jewellery store robbery in Kensington turned out to be on-duty chuggers.

Robert Dennis (pictured), 27, a team leader for Gift Fundraising, and his colleague Scott Adams were fundraising for the NSPCC outside the Ernest Jones shop in Kensington High Street last Thursday when a motorcycle gang stormed the shop with sledgehammers. Dennis and Adams were among the first members of the public to tackle the five-man gang, and Dennis manged to trip one of them up so he could be pinned down until police arrived.

While the other four robbers managed to escape, they panicked and fled without most of their haul. Dennis returned a bag of watches to staff who had taken refuge in the store during the robbery.

The Evening Standard interviewed Dennis after the event and reported his comments in that evening’s newspaper. But funnily enough it described him not as a ‘chugger’ or ‘charity mugger’, its usual phraseology when covering face-to-face fundraising, but as a ‘charity worker’. Presumably a chugger couldn’t also be a hero…

And the day’s successes didn’t end there for the plucky fundraisers, either. One onlooker signed up for a direct debit because he said he had been so impressed by their heroics. By the end of the day the team had secured £2,000 worth of pledges.

Directory: Gift Fundraising

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.