One of the magazines I read regularly has a small space for what they call, the ‘good news’. In relation to the size of the magazine it is indeed a very small space – about four paragraphs in a total of eighty pages. How nice then to wake this morning to the news that billionaire investment guru Warren Buffet has decided to donate about $37bn (£20bn), which is reported to be most of his vast personal fortune, to a charitable foundation. He will apparently hand over 10 million shares in his Berkshire Hathaway firm to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation, which was set up by Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, aims to fight disease and promote education around the world. It has become one of the leading philanthropical organisations in the world, hoping to reduce what it calls the ‘unconscionable disparity’ that exists between the way that we live and the way that the people of the developing world live. As I am typing this with the aid of one of the Microsoft products that helped build Bill Gates his fortune I am aware of the cynicism that exists when rich people make donations to charity. There will always be those that find fault with such philanthropic gestures and point to the inconsistencies between the way they do business and their benevolence. But when two of the world’s richest men try to better our world we should applaud their efforts, be thankful that more money hasn’t been lost to governments in inheritance tax and hope more people follow their example.
