Next door to the empty shop opposite the Central Library to its left and the 99p Store to its right is the 'charity' shop of the British Heart Foundation at 257 High Street. This organisation, (which is not the NHS) had a massive income in the £160,000,000 region in 2006/7, but still want more and so has opened up recently in Walthamstow to see what more they can raise.

Raising money is a large part of what the British Heart Foundation does: according to intelligentgiving.com, they only expended 49% of their income on things which count as 'charity': of the rest of their expenditure, according to intelligentgiving.com, the money 'usually goes into raising more income. A little covers legal requirements'. In other words, they seem focussed as much if not more on raising money to keep themselves in business (and their fundraisers in salaries) than they are on putting themselves out of it. Its a charity which advertises itself as 'the employer of choice', offering its employees benefits such as private medical insurance. Raising money with this lot is a career.

They spend an awful lot of money on 'raising awareness of heart-related matters'. If I am being apparently unfair on these good-hearted, purely altruistic people, all I can say is that I can only be critical while they fail to answer key questions about themselves, like explaining to the public how they invest their enormous income. They hold at least 5 months worth of operating expenditure in reserve at any one time. Controversially, they have no published ethical investment policy and are believed to pay their chief executive in excess of £150,000 per year. Their Head of Volunteering pulls in £60,000. In Walthamstow they offer 'volunteering opportunities' to help raise money spent on sustaining this lifestyle for their senior management team. They also have a form of fundraising where children are encouraged to raise money through skipping, with a quarter of the income raised being retained by the schools they attend. Do the children get told about the animal experiments they fund?

How do else they raise their money in Walthamstow? Well, they sell second hand clothes donated to them (they call it 'recycling') as well as books. These, according to a sign in the window, are on sale from 50p, but on the day I visited recently, there were none which I could see at that price. Most books were at around the £2.50 mark. Down at Crest they cost about 40p for a paperback.

The smell in the two shops is about the same, but I think the people of Walthamstow may get more bang for their ethical buck from Crest.