Speaker 1: Pushkin. An old man walked up and down his garden.
Speaker 1: Then he walked up and down his garden again. The
Speaker 1: next day, the old man walked up and down his garden.
Speaker 1: This may not sound very interesting, but in April twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the old man walking up and down his garden was
Speaker 1: big news in the UK. Day after day, the old
Speaker 1: man was on all the newspaper front pages, the BBC's
Speaker 1: and a camera crew to the garden to broadcast live
Speaker 1: to the nation. As the old man shuffled carefully along,
Speaker 1: gripping the handles of his walking frame, his shoulders hunched
Speaker 1: smartly dressed in a shirt tie and blazer, army medals
Speaker 1: pinned to his chest. In endless television interviews, the old
Speaker 1: man shared his homespun optimistic philosophy. Tomorrow will be a
Speaker 1: good day. Lord knows we needed some optimism. In April
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, a month into the first COVID lockdown, what
Speaker 1: else was on the news in Britain? Daily government press
Speaker 1: conferences with their grim statistics about infections, hospital admissions and deaths.
Speaker 1: The slogan on the lectern exhorted Brits to stay home
Speaker 1: protect the NHS A yes, the NHS the National Health Service.
Speaker 1: In windows of houses, people put up posters their children's
Speaker 1: crew drawings of rainbows adorned with the words thank you NHS.
Speaker 1: Once a week, at eight pm on Thursday, would all
Speaker 1: open eyes our doors, stand on our doorsteps, bang spoons
Speaker 1: on saucepans, and applaud the clap for carers. Then we'd
Speaker 1: all go back inside to resume the business of staying home.
Speaker 1: It was a strange time. Along came a man who
Speaker 1: captured the zeitgeist. An old man walking up and down
Speaker 1: his garden. Captain Tom Moore was ninety nine years old.
Speaker 1: He was recovering from a fall that had fractured his hip.
Speaker 1: He wanted to walk up and down his garden one
Speaker 1: hundred times before his one hundredth birthday, a sponsored walk
Speaker 1: to raise money for the NHS nurses who'd cared for him.
Speaker 1: The British people took Captain Tom to their hearts. Thousands
Speaker 1: of pounds rolled in for Captain Tom's sponsored walk, then millions,
Speaker 1: then tens of millions. It was the good story of
Speaker 1: the lockdown. I mentioned that this story started in a
Speaker 1: strange time, but as the world got back to normal,
Speaker 1: the story itself just got stranger. It tells us something
Speaker 1: about our own impulse to give to good causes, and
Speaker 1: it ends in disgrace with a wrecking crew in the
Speaker 1: old man's garden. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to
Speaker 1: cautionary tales. Tom Moore's family had his one hundredth birthday
Speaker 1: party all planned out, roaster Hog and hire a singer
Speaker 1: to perform hits from Tom's youth, like the Vera Lynn
Speaker 1: classic We'll Meet Again. When that song came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, Tom was nineteen years old. Young men
Speaker 1: were going to fight in the Second World War, and
Speaker 1: Vera Lynn gave them the words for their goodbyes to
Speaker 1: their families. We'll meet again. Don't know where, don't know when,
Speaker 1: but I know we'll meet again some sunny day. Tom
Speaker 1: served for six years in the British Army, rising to
Speaker 1: the rank of captain. He built a career in sales
Speaker 1: and management, raised two daughters, retired and nursed his wife
Speaker 1: through dementia. After his wife died, Tom moved in with
Speaker 1: his younger daughter, Hannah, her husband, and their two children.
Speaker 1: Hannah Ingram Moore is one of Britain's leading business women.
Speaker 1: As she says on her website, which offers her services
Speaker 1: as a brand marketing coach and acclaimed business strategist. The
Speaker 1: family lived in a big house in a village in Bedfordshire,
Speaker 1: an hour north of London. The move gave Tom a purpose,
Speaker 1: As Hannah later explained to a journalist, it started to
Speaker 1: feel invisible in old age. People look through me, he complained.
Speaker 1: Even in his nineties, he could still make himself useful
Speaker 1: In the ingram Moore's big house. Tom fed the dogs,
Speaker 1: mowed the lawn, tinkered in the workshop, and cooked roast dinners.
Speaker 1: One day, unloading the dishwasher, he tripped. I got tangled
Speaker 1: up on my own feet, he recalled. He hit his head,
Speaker 1: fractured his hip and punctured his lung. From his bedside,
Speaker 1: Hannah called her sister, you'd better come. He's not going
Speaker 1: to make it, but he did. After weeks in hospital,
Speaker 1: Tom was well enough to go back home and determined
Speaker 1: to get back on his feet again. He ordered a
Speaker 1: treadmill so he could keep up his physio exercises. During winter,
Speaker 1: the family started to plan his one hundredth birthday party
Speaker 1: for the end of April. Not many heroes of the
Speaker 1: Second World War made it to that age. Maybe the
Speaker 1: local newspaper would like to print his picture. Hannah drafted
Speaker 1: a press release, but then came COVID nobody would be
Speaker 1: holding any parties in April. As the weather improved, Tom
Speaker 1: moved his physio regime into the garden, walking up and
Speaker 1: down with the aid of his walking frame. Hannah's husband
Speaker 1: suggested a challenge. Could you do one hundred laps of
Speaker 1: the garden to celebrate your one hundredth birthday. I'll give
Speaker 1: a pounder lap to the charity of your choice. Fair enough,
Speaker 1: said Tom. He chose NHS Charities Together, an organization that
Speaker 1: supports frontline healthcare workers, like the ones who'd nursed him
Speaker 1: back to health after his fall. The children took a
Speaker 1: video of Tom walking with his frame and sent it
Speaker 1: to friends and family. Hannah set up a page on
Speaker 1: the website just giving dot com. She set a target
Speaker 1: of one thousand pounds about twelve hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: Then she remembered the draft press release about the party
Speaker 1: that wasn't going to happen. She rewrote it, sharing details
Speaker 1: of Tom's sponsored walk instead, and sent it off to
Speaker 1: the local media. You can never be sure what's going
Speaker 1: to go viral. Lots of people set themselves personal challenges
Speaker 1: and ask for pledges to charity to motivate them to
Speaker 1: see that challenge through. The vast majority hold no interest
Speaker 1: at all for anyone beyond friends and family. Why did
Speaker 1: Captain Tom make headlines? One answer comes from metaphor, the
Speaker 1: language we choose to talk about events. When the COVID
Speaker 1: pandemic came along, For example, some used the metaphor of
Speaker 1: a natural disaster, a tsunami of illness approaching our shores.
Speaker 1: Some used metaphors from sport. We had to think of
Speaker 1: Lockdown as a marathon, not a sprint. But the most
Speaker 1: common metaphor war. COVID was an attacker, an enemy that
Speaker 1: must be fought. The choice of metaphor matters. In times
Speaker 1: of war. Governments can impose authoritarian measures that we'd never
Speaker 1: normally let them get away with. People can be asked
Speaker 1: to make sacrifices for the common good. In a broadcast
Speaker 1: to the nation early in the first Lockdown, the Queen
Speaker 1: herself ninety three years old, asked Britons for those sacrifices.
Speaker 2: I hope in the years to come everyone will be
Speaker 2: able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge,
Speaker 2: and those who come after us will say the Britons
Speaker 2: of this generation were as strong as.
Speaker 1: Any, as strong as any. The Queen was asking us
Speaker 1: to compare ourselves to the strongest generation, the one that
Speaker 1: defeated Hitler. In case that wasn't clear enough.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of the very first broadcast I made
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: The Queen ended her message to the nation by asking
Speaker 1: us to endure the loneliness of lockdown and have faith
Speaker 1: that better times lay ahead.
Speaker 2: We will be with our friends again. We will be
Speaker 2: with our families again. We will meet again.
Speaker 1: We'll meet again. Don't know where, don't know when. The
Speaker 1: virus was the Nazis, the pandemic was the Second World War.
Speaker 1: Enduring the lockdown was like surviving the blitz. Then into
Speaker 1: the national consciousness shuffled Captain Tom. Here was a man
Speaker 1: who'd served his nation in the Second World War, a
Speaker 1: living link to that spirit of collective sacrifice that had
Speaker 1: got us through the war and would get us through
Speaker 1: the lockdown. Determinedly plodding up and down his garden raising
Speaker 1: money in aid of frontline NHS workers, here was a
Speaker 1: man who personified the very best of British, selfless, stoical, steadfast.
Speaker 1: With hindsight, you can see why the name latched on
Speaker 1: to Captain Tom. You couldn't have come up with a
Speaker 1: better symbol of British lockdown spirit if you had tried.
Speaker 1: But when Hannah ingram Moore pressed send on her email
Speaker 1: to the local press, she could hardly have imagined the
Speaker 1: perfect storm she was about to unleash. Cautionary tales will
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. Hannah ingram Moore's press release
Speaker 1: leads to an interview on a local radio station. Donations
Speaker 1: on just giving dot Com pass the one thousand pounds target.
Speaker 1: She gets a call from a local television station. What
Speaker 1: might be a realistic new target, Hannah wonders. The local
Speaker 1: TV people are skeptical. It's a lovely story, they say,
Speaker 1: but don't get your hopes too high. The economy is
Speaker 1: ground to a halt with a lockdown. Nobody's in the
Speaker 1: mood to spend money at the moment. The piece on
Speaker 1: local television catches the attention of national television. The BBC
Speaker 1: want to interview Tom live on their breakfast show. Hannah
Speaker 1: and the family scramble to figure out the technology. They
Speaker 1: put an old music stand in front of Tom's favorite
Speaker 1: chair and secure Hannah's phone to it with blue tag.
Speaker 1: Tom's a bit deaf and the phone speaker isn't very loud,
Speaker 1: so Hannah perches on a chair next to him to
Speaker 1: repeat what the BBC presenters say.
Speaker 3: So, how are you going to what would you say
Speaker 3: to the nation in order to help us all to
Speaker 3: keep calm.
Speaker 4: And carrying that remember tomorrow is a good day. Tomorrow
Speaker 4: may be fine, everything better than today.
Speaker 1: Donations on Captain Tom's just Giving page flash past five thousand,
Speaker 1: then ten thousand, one hundred thousand. The broadcaster Peers Morgan
Speaker 1: invites Tom and Hannah onto his morning show on ITV.
Speaker 1: By now the totals closing in on half a million,
Speaker 1: and Morgan says he's going to help.
Speaker 5: Here's what I'm going to do, Tom, I'm going to
Speaker 5: put ten thousand pounds of my own money into your
Speaker 5: fundraising today and I hope that encourages everyone watching at
Speaker 5: home to do the same, to be as generous as
Speaker 5: they can.
Speaker 1: Two days later, Tom's in the middle of yet another
Speaker 1: interview on the BBC when the presenter cuts in with
Speaker 1: breaking news. Donations have just passed five million, with no
Speaker 1: signs of stopping. In two thousand and seven, the economists
Speaker 1: Dean Carlin and Daniel Wood worked with the charity Freedom
Speaker 1: from Hunger to conduct an experiment. They wanted to explore
Speaker 1: a simple question, why do people donate to charity? There's
Speaker 1: an obvious answer, we want to do good in the world,
Speaker 1: obvious but often wrong. The researchers tested the impact of
Speaker 1: two kinds of direct male appeal. Both male shots started
Speaker 1: with a photo of a sad looking woman and some
Speaker 1: heartrending text Sebastiana has known nothing but abject poverty her
Speaker 1: entire life. One group of donors got a male shot
Speaker 1: that went on to explain how caring people like you
Speaker 1: had helped Sebastiana to turn her life around. Her young
Speaker 1: son Aurelio, runs up to hug her. She says, I
Speaker 1: do whatever I can for my children. The other group's
Speaker 1: mail shot instead talked about how rigorous scientific methodologies attested
Speaker 1: to the cost effectiveness of the charity's intervention. The result
Speaker 1: a few larger donors gave more when they received the
Speaker 1: text about rigorous scientific methodologies, but most smaller donors gave less.
Speaker 1: They weren't moved to donate by evidence that their donation
Speaker 1: would be maximally cost effective. They were moved by the
Speaker 1: thought of a young boy hugging his mum. They gave
Speaker 1: not to do good, but to feel good. Economists call
Speaker 1: it the warm glow effect, and it surely explains why
Speaker 1: BRIT's in the pandemic through so much money that Captain
Speaker 1: Tom's fundraising appeal. Not many will have read up on
Speaker 1: the detail of how NHS charities together propose to use
Speaker 1: their donation and carefully weighed up against alternative potential recipients
Speaker 1: of their generosity. No, they wanted to see the look
Speaker 1: on the old man's face as a journalist tells him
Speaker 1: the total has blasted past another milestone. Captain Tom's fundraising
Speaker 1: made Britain feel good about itself in a difficult time.
Speaker 1: You've got a warm glow from being part of it.
Speaker 1: At the ingram Moor's House lockdown, life has gone crazy.
Speaker 1: Tom is doing dozens of interviews a day. The local
Speaker 1: post office is groaning under the weight of hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of cards to congratulate Tom on his one hundredth birthday.
Speaker 1: Far too many cards for the family to cope with.
Speaker 1: Volunteers at the local school put them on too display.
Speaker 1: Soon they've taken over the whole school hall. Satellite broadcast
Speaker 1: vans descend on the village, drones buzz over the ingram
Speaker 1: Maor's garden, camera's poke through the hedge. It's overwhelming, intrusive, exhausting,
Speaker 1: but as long as the money keeps rolling in for charity,
Speaker 1: Tom and his family decide they can't possibly stop. When
Speaker 1: the day arrives for Tom to complete his one hundredth lap,
Speaker 1: Tom's old Army regiment sends soldiers to line up in
Speaker 1: his garden in a guard of honor. Socially distanced, of course,
Speaker 1: The BBC broadcasts the event live to the nation with
Speaker 1: a reverential commentary as Tom carefully pushes his walking frame
Speaker 1: towards the camera.
Speaker 3: And here he comes. Captain Tom Moore approach his one
Speaker 3: hundredth birthday, one hundred laps of his garden during lockdown,
Speaker 3: all of the money going to NHS charity is a
Speaker 3: guard of honor from the first Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment
Speaker 3: inches Togo and there he is.
Speaker 1: Congratulations. The moment might have seemed just a little bit absurd,
Speaker 1: all this pomp and ceremony for an old man walking
Speaker 1: up and down his garden. But it was touching, nonetheless,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't over yet. Tom had completed his laps
Speaker 1: with a couple of weeks to spare before his birthday.
Speaker 1: The singer and Broadway star Michael Ball got in touch.
Speaker 1: He wanted to release a song with Tom, a cover
Speaker 1: of You'll Never Walk Alone When You Walk. Tom recorded
Speaker 1: his part from his favorite armchair, Michael Ball from his
Speaker 1: home studio. The screen split into dozens of zoom call
Speaker 1: boxes filled with nurses from the NHS Voices of Care Choir.
Speaker 1: The song went straight to number one. All proceeds went
Speaker 1: to NHS charities together. When the appeal on JustGiving dot
Speaker 1: com came to a close on the last day of
Speaker 1: April Tom's one hundredth birthday, he'd raised an astonishing thirty
Speaker 1: eight point nine million pounds for NHS frontline workers. That's
Speaker 1: about fifty million dollars. The Royal Air Force celebrated by
Speaker 1: flying two wartime planes, a hurricane and a spitfire over
Speaker 1: Tom's garden. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Tom
Speaker 1: would be knighted for his services to fundraising, becoming Captain
Speaker 1: Sir Tom. The Whirlwind appeal was over. What next? Tom could,
Speaker 1: of course, have chosen to withdraw from the public eye
Speaker 1: and live out his days in the privacy he had
Speaker 1: enjoyed until a few short weeks ago. But he was
Speaker 1: now a famous, much loved figure. Captain Tom had become
Speaker 1: a powerful brand. There must be opportunities to use his
Speaker 1: public profile to do even more good. The family decided
Speaker 1: a new charity should be set up, the Captain Tom Foundation.
Speaker 1: It would raise money and make grants to causes close
Speaker 1: to Tom's heart. The family also set up a new
Speaker 1: company and trademark Captain Tom's name. The charity's website linked
Speaker 1: to and looked very much like an online store from
Speaker 1: which you could buy official Captain Tom t shirts a
Speaker 1: Captain Tom Rose or Captain Tom Jin that would give
Speaker 1: you a warm glow twice over from the name on
Speaker 1: the label and the booze in the bottle. If you
Speaker 1: clicked through to buy something from the online store, the
Speaker 1: proceeds would go to the Captain Tom Foundation. Right The
Speaker 1: online store also promoted Captain Tom's memoir, hastily commissioned by
Speaker 1: a publishing company, entitled Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day.
Speaker 1: In the prologue, Tom wrote astonishingly at my age with
Speaker 1: the offer to write this memoir. I've also been given
Speaker 1: the chance to raise even more money for the charitable
Speaker 1: foundation now established in my name. That seemed pretty clear
Speaker 1: by the book, and the money would go towards the
Speaker 1: charitable foundation, or some of the money at least, wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: Cautionary tales will be back in a moment. In December
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, the UK had just emerged from a second lockdown,
Speaker 1: and people briefly dared to hope for a festive Christmas,
Speaker 1: But as the nights grew darker, the virus started spreading again,
Speaker 1: and quickly, hesitant to impose yet another strict lockdown, the
Speaker 1: government tried a touch of social pressure, asking people to
Speaker 1: keep their celebrations short, small and local. Limit who you meet.
Speaker 1: Do you really have to travel? Just because it's legal
Speaker 1: to do something doesn't mean it's sensible. The ingram Moor family, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: had jetted off to Barbados courtesy of free flights from
Speaker 1: British airways. As the mood back in the UK became grimmer,
Speaker 1: the Captain Tom Twitter account tweeted out a photo of
Speaker 1: Tom Hannah, her husband, and their two children enjoying a
Speaker 1: beautiful family day in the Barbados Sunshine, it said, followed
Speaker 1: by a sunshine emoji and hashtag tomorrow will be a
Speaker 1: good day. The response on Twitter was mixed. Enjoy every moment,
Speaker 1: said one user, read the room advised another, I've omitted
Speaker 1: the swear words. The Captain Tom brand took a bit
Speaker 1: of a dent. Some people started to mutter, are the
Speaker 1: family really in this for the purest of motives? The
Speaker 1: following month, January twenty twenty one, Britain entered its third
Speaker 1: national lockdown. Tom himself caught COVID and went into hospital.
Speaker 1: Well wishes flooded in. The singer Michael Ball, for instance,
Speaker 1: tweeted love and prayers for Moore and his lovely family.
Speaker 1: Stay strong, sir, But this time Tom didn't make it.
Speaker 1: He died at the start of February. Amid the tributes,
Speaker 1: some people on Twitter said unkind things about the Barbados jolly.
Speaker 1: The broadcaster Peers Morgan left to the defense of the
Speaker 1: ingram More family. He had spoken to Hannah. They had
Speaker 1: been deeply hurt by the online trolling. Morgan said it
Speaker 1: was despicable. It should also have been a warning Captain
Speaker 1: Tom was dead. But the Captain Tom Foundation lived on
Speaker 1: with a real chance to do good in the world,
Speaker 1: and that would mean that the Captain Tom brand would
Speaker 1: need to be looked after. But if anyone was going
Speaker 1: to understand the importance of managing public perceptions, it would
Speaker 1: be a brand marketing coach. Lucky then that this was
Speaker 1: precisely Hannah's area of expertise. By law, charities and companies
Speaker 1: must publish their accounts once a year. The first year
Speaker 1: of the Captain Tom Foundation's accounts showed it had raised
Speaker 1: over a million pounds. It had given out some grants
Speaker 1: to good causes, and spent a larger amount on support costs,
Speaker 1: including tens of thousands of pounds paid to companies controlled
Speaker 1: by the Ingram War family. But those were costs incurred
Speaker 1: in getting the charity up and running. It was fair
Speaker 1: enough that they'd be reimbursed. As for the company set
Speaker 1: up to own the Captain Tom trademarks, the accounts showed
Speaker 1: income of over eight hundred thousand pounds about a million dollars.
Speaker 1: Where exactly had all that money come from? A journalist
Speaker 1: emailed Hannah to ask. She didn't reply. The muttering grew louder.
Speaker 1: Journalists asked more questions that official Captain Tom Limited Edition
Speaker 1: gin for example. Exactly how much of the purchase price
Speaker 1: went to the Captain Tom Foundation, Well, some of it,
Speaker 1: but how much the gin was quietly pulled from sale.
Speaker 1: Hannah began working as the interim CEO of the Captain
Speaker 1: Tom Foundation. She asked for a salary of one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand pounds a year, but the Charity Commission,
Speaker 1: which regulates charities in England, said that was too much
Speaker 1: for the CEO of a new small foundation. Eighty five
Speaker 1: thousand pounds should be plenty. That's still more than one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars and nearly three times the average wage
Speaker 1: in the UK. Still a bit disappointing. Not to worry, though,
Speaker 1: There were other ways to make money. For example, Hannah
Speaker 1: made a deal to provide ambassador services for a media
Speaker 1: company's charity awards using Captain Tom's name. It was later
Speaker 1: revealed the company paid twenty thousand pounds for these services,
Speaker 1: but just two thousand of that went to the Captain
Speaker 1: Tom Foundation. Eighteen thousand went to Hannah ingram Moore. Charities
Speaker 1: by law must have independent trustees who act in the
Speaker 1: charity's best interests. Both Hannah and her husband served for
Speaker 1: a time among the trustees for the Captain Tom Foundation.
Speaker 1: But were the foundation's trustees doing a good enough job?
Speaker 1: The charity Commission started to wander They set up an inquiry. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Hannah and her husband submitted a planning application to put
Speaker 1: up a new building in the garden of their big house.
Speaker 1: In English villages, you can't just build anything you like
Speaker 1: on land you own. Development is strictly controlled by the
Speaker 1: local government. The ingram Moors applied for permission to build
Speaker 1: a Captain Tom Foundation building. It would be used for
Speaker 1: charitable purposes. How could the local bureaucrats refuse? It's a
Speaker 1: curious thing though. When the building actually went up, neighbors
Speaker 1: noticed it was somewhat bigger than the plans for which
Speaker 1: permission had been given. Also, it contained a luxury spa pool.
Speaker 1: How exactly was a spapool going to be used for
Speaker 1: charitable purposes? Well, it had the opportunity to offer rehabilitation
Speaker 1: sessions for elderly people in the area on a once
Speaker 1: or twice per week basis, said the Ingram Mares as
Speaker 1: they appealed to the local authority to grant them retrospective
Speaker 1: planning permission for the building. They'd actually built. As the
Speaker 1: negative news stories piled up in twenty twenty three, Hannah
Speaker 1: and her husband decided they should do an interview. They
Speaker 1: turned to the broadcaster Piers Morgan. It was his donation
Speaker 1: that had kickstarted the initial fundraising drive. In the first lockdown.
Speaker 1: He had defended them staunchly against the online trolls after
Speaker 1: Tom's death, But when they appeared on Piers Morgan uncensored,
Speaker 1: they soon discovered that Morgan wasn't going to pull his punches.
Speaker 5: It's very hard to argue that you need a spa
Speaker 5: pool to pay tribute to your father.
Speaker 1: Morgan turned to the mysterious question of the eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand pounds. Where exactly had that come from? The Ingram
Speaker 1: Moors tried to be vague, Morgan kept pushing. This is
Speaker 1: a really unfair line of questioning, said Hannah. She demanded
Speaker 1: that the cameras be turned off. When the cameras came
Speaker 1: back on again, Morgan had evidently persuaded them to answer.
Speaker 1: Most of the money had come from the book deal.
Speaker 1: Tom's autobiography Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day have become
Speaker 1: a best seller, But shouldn't some of that money have
Speaker 1: gone to the charity, asked Morgan, No, said Hannah. It
Speaker 1: was my father's book. He wrote it. He was very
Speaker 1: clear about that. The regulator, the Charity Commission, published its
Speaker 1: investigation report in twenty twenty four. Among other things, they
Speaker 1: considered the question of Tom's book. Remember what he had
Speaker 1: written in the prologue with the offer to write this memoir,
Speaker 1: I've also been given the chance to raise even more
Speaker 1: money for the charity foundation now established in my name.
Speaker 1: Emails from the time showed that the publishers expected some
Speaker 1: cash to go to the charity, and there was a
Speaker 1: press release too, published in support of the Captain Tom Foundation.
Speaker 1: The ingram More's argued that publication of Tom's autobiography did
Speaker 1: support the foundation in the sense that it was prominently
Speaker 1: mentioned in news coverage of the book's launch that amounted
Speaker 1: to thousands of pounds worth of free advertising, promotion and
Speaker 1: media space. The Charity Commission didn't buy it, their report says.
Speaker 1: The Inquiry formerly wrote to mister and Missus ingram Moore
Speaker 1: to provide them with an opportunity to rectify matters by
Speaker 1: making a donation to the charity. They declined to do so.
Speaker 1: The Inquiry looked at the Gin and the SPA and
Speaker 1: the deal with the media company. It found that there
Speaker 1: had been repeated instances a blurring of boundaries between private
Speaker 1: and charitable interests, and repeated instances of misconduct and all
Speaker 1: mismanagement on the part of Hannah and her husband. The
Speaker 1: Ingram wars had damaged public trust and confidence in charities generally.
Speaker 1: The broadcaster Piers Morgan tweeted his response to the report shameful.
Speaker 1: The singer Michael Ball recalled how incredibly proud he had
Speaker 1: been of his duet with Captain Tom and added to
Speaker 1: see it twisted. Really, it's a real shame. It's easy
Speaker 1: to criticize Hannah Ingram. More too easy. I want to
Speaker 1: suggest another villain of this story, You and me and
Speaker 1: everyone who's ever donated to a charity without pausing to
Speaker 1: ask what evidence exists that the charity is effective and
Speaker 1: well run. Just think back to April twenty twenty, when
Speaker 1: the British public were pledging millions upon millions of pounds
Speaker 1: inspired by the sight of an elderly veteran hobbling up
Speaker 1: and down his own garden. What did most of us
Speaker 1: know about how the network of NHS charities would use
Speaker 1: the money, not much, and yet we gave anyway because
Speaker 1: giving felt good. No harm done, you might say, in
Speaker 1: this case, the charities probably used the money well, but
Speaker 1: the problem is the culture it creates. We give money
Speaker 1: to get a warm glow and don't give much thought
Speaker 1: to how the money will be spent. Later, when the
Speaker 1: fundraising effort moved to the brand new Captain Tom Foundation,
Speaker 1: what did we know about how this foundation would be run? Nothing?
Speaker 1: Yet some people gave anyway because giving felt good. In
Speaker 1: his book Doing Good Better, the philosopher Will McCaskill points
Speaker 1: out that the charity world often lacks effective feedback mechanisms.
Speaker 1: Invest in a bad company and you lose money, But
Speaker 1: give money to a bad charity and you probably won't
Speaker 1: hear about its failings, which may explain why Hannah ingram
Speaker 1: Moore didn't see a problem with her plans bad charities
Speaker 1: CRUs on goodwill all the time. That said, there's not
Speaker 1: usually as much goodwill as there was for Captain Tom,
Speaker 1: and charities aren't usually quite as bad as the Captain
Speaker 1: Tom Foundation was. We can blame Hannah ingram Moore, of course,
Speaker 1: for giving in to the temptation to blur the boundaries
Speaker 1: between private and charitable interests. But if donors routine did
Speaker 1: as much due diligence on charities as investors do on companies,
Speaker 1: that temptation might never have existed. The Captain Tom Foundation
Speaker 1: shut up shop. The Charity Commission disqualified Hannah and her
Speaker 1: husband from running or being a trustee of any charity.
Speaker 1: But the Ingram Wars had one last ignominy to suffer.
Speaker 1: They'd appealed to the local authority for retrospective planning permission
Speaker 1: for their spa building. The planners said no, it would
Speaker 1: have to be demolished. The media once again converged on
Speaker 1: the Ingram Moore's house with their cameras, this time to
Speaker 1: film an excavator knocking down a spa in the garden
Speaker 1: where Tom Moore had once inspired a nation. Now they
Speaker 1: are pile of rubble. Sometimes the metaphors write themselves. For
Speaker 1: a full list of our sources, see the show notes
Speaker 1: at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me
Speaker 1: Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound
Speaker 1: design and original music are the work of the Pascal Wise.
Speaker 1: Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to Barry Wise, who provided the pieces on
Speaker 1: piano for this episode. Bender Daphaffrey edited the scripts. The
Speaker 1: show features the voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford,
Speaker 1: Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp, Massaamn Roe, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright.
Speaker 1: The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work
Speaker 1: of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohene, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody,
Speaker 1: Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios
Speaker 1: in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show,
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate and review. It really makes
Speaker 1: a difference to us and if you want to hear
Speaker 1: the show, add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on
Speaker 1: the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm,
Speaker 1: slash plus, m