Most of us would rather leave our money to donkeys than this incompetent Government

Telegraph

23-02-2025

What is it about donkeys? In Italy's Veneto, they turn the Furlana breed, or so the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity tells me, into salami. In Britain, a surprising number of us choose to bequeath our worldly goods to their welfare.
In 2023, the Donkey Sanctuary, based near Sidmouth in Devon, received £32,396,000 in legacies, far outstripping the £15,161,000 they received in lifetime donations.
The charity's assets stood at over £100m and they cared for over 6,500 donkeys and mules. The UK donkey population stands at around 27,000 – so around £1,885 was raised per British beast in just one year.
For those wanting to leave their assets to more specific asinine causes, there is the Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land. Its patrons include ex-politician and Strictly contestant, Ann Widdecombe, retired sports presenter Des Lynam and broadcaster Kay Burley.
The charity received over £1m in legacies in 2023, out of a total income of just over £2m. It looks after around 180 donkeys in Israel and operates a clinic in the Palestinian town of Nablus that is 'extremely busy, especially on Thursdays when the nearby donkey market is in operation'.
They currently have an emergency appeal going for the donkeys of Gaza. 'The war in Gaza is a catastrophe which has brought death and destruction on an unimaginable scale… But there are also donkeys caught up in the conflict,' we are told.
Last week, the University of Exeter announced their film studies students could take a module exploring the portrayal of donkeys on the screen.
I dimly remember Sunday nights in my 1980s childhood watching Esther Rantzen's That's Life – a rather bizarre mixture of consumer affairs and light entertainment – giving seemingly endless accounts of that week's fiesta in some obscure and unpronounceable flyblown Spanish town planning to do unspeakable things to an unfortunate donkey.
British TV viewers would somehow come to the asinine beast's rescue. (My own two boys don't realise just how lucky they are, at least in regard to their myriad viewing options).
Perhaps an under-explored aspect of the Brexit vote is to what extent different attitudes to animals drove us away from our Continental neighbours – we seem particularly prone to mawkishness when it comes to lesser creatures.
Donkeys are far from the only animals to be recipients of our end-of-life largesse. The People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, the Dogs Trust and the Cats Protection League feature year after year in the ranking of the top 20 charities for legacy income, each receiving more this way than the Devonian donkey home.
And giving experts estimate that this legacy income will only go up in the coming years.
In the 2023-24 tax year, the total legacy income of UK charities was estimated by consultancy Legacy Futures at around £4.1bn, up from £900m 20 years ago. This torrent funding comes from around 142,000 bequests, although just 13,000 of these account for over £2.4bn of giving.
Unsurprisingly, health and medical research charities are the largest recipients, receiving 41pc of the total – but animals come in second at 15pc, or over £600m per annum. Children's charities in contrast receive only around one fifth as much, a little over £120m.
Legacy Futures estimates that annual charitable legacies will rise to £6.5bn annually in real terms by 2060. What is behind the inexorable rise in British legacy giving?
The total property wealth of those over 65 in the UK is estimated at over £2.5 trillion. The vast majority of this money will, of course, pass on to children – and some of this will be transferred while the parents are still alive. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that £17bn is lent or given each year by still living parents to their adult children.
But some of these funds will go to other places, whether it is because there are no children to pass things on to or for whatever other reason. And Palestinian donkeys may not even be the oddest cause.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain is an old and unusual political beast. It is a Marxist, but anti-Leninist, political party that denounced the Bolshevik revolution not long after it happened for being anti-socialist, or at least contra its own interpretation of the creed.
Some who pass its headquarters on Clapham High Street may wonder how it keeps going with its dwindling membership (you need to pass an exam in the correct interpretation of the German sage's words to be admitted). The answer is that Electoral Commission figures show it has received legacies of nearly £2m in the last 10 years.
It seems many of us are willing to leave our money virtually anywhere other than to the Exchequer. Charitable legacies are exempt from inheritance tax.
Furthermore, since 2012, if 10pc or more of an estate is left to charity, then the rate of inheritance tax on anything above the threshold is reduced from 40pc to 36pc.
Most of us want to decide for ourselves what happens to our money, rather than leave it to the whims and priorities of a here today, gone tomorrow government.
And it turns out that donkeys are one of the beneficiaries of this near universal instinct.