Scottish singing sensation

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

So 35p goes to Simon Cowell and 15p goes to charity. For every pound the charity gets, Simon Cowell gets £2.33. Obviously there are running costs etc, so the exact split would be slightly different, but the point is still the same. Put another way, would you put 10 dollars in a charity bowl if you had to give nearly twenty five dollars to the guy with the Rolex and Armani suit standing beside you at the same time?
Or would you prefer to choose your own charity and know that 100% of your money was going to it? And that you could choose a cause that was close to your heart? Unless of course one's chosen cause was making rich people richer, maybe if that was the case one could just give the whole 50p straight to Simon, cut out the middleman?

The 15p is just there as a salve for consciences and to foil the complaints that people would have about paying to vote on one of these things if they thought that all their money was being pocketed. I would place a very large wager that there were consultancy firms that decided very carefully what the absolute minimum charity donation % should be that would maximise "donations" by allowing people to fool themselves that they were supporting a good cause rather than mostly lining someone's pockets...

Forgive me if I seem cynical, perhaps I am just jealous that someone else managed to figure out how to get people to send them millions of pounds for practically no reason before I did! Does anyone want to buy some old rope? I also have 10 million dollars in an account in Africa that I can send to you for just $100,000 in administration fees! How about for just 20p you can tell me what your favourite tartan is, with 10 tartans eliminated per week until the grand tartan final! 5p of that goes to support a charity for ye olde retired tartans!

Actually Mr. Cowell doesn't get nearly that much from the phone calls. Generally the service provider (presumably BT) gets 60% of the charge; Royal Variety Charity gets 15%, with Mr. Cowall receiving the rest, or 25%. Of that 25% roughly one third is eaten up by collecting and processing the data received, and in auditing the BT returns, leaving Cowell with about 20%, before taxes (Mr. Cowell pays what-- 50%?), so he's probably making about the same as, or a bit less than, the Royal Variety Charity.

So who is the worse here? Cowell, who is sharing his telephone earnings on a more or less 50-50 basis with a charity, or the cynics who lacked the talent, foresight, and business acumen to tap into the market Mr. Cowell has found?

In my experience people tend to spend more each week down at the pub than they give to charity-- that being the case, Mr. Cowell seems to be doing the right thing, as much as some may envy-- and resent-- his ability to do it.