Last month in the United States, Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates launched their ‘giving pledge’ calling on every US billionaire, and essentially every billionaire around the globe, to pledge to give 50 per cent of their fortune to charity. If successful, this could result in an extra $600 billion going to charitable causes in America alone.

In the UK, on a much, much smaller level, we’ve had our own charity minister Nick Hurd recently encouraging people to follow his own example and give 1 per cent of their income to charity. When making this call to action, he added, ‘I get my children to decide which charities I give to because I want to encourage them to start thinking about these things.’ Good intentions behind these actions I’m sure, Mr Hurd. But, a word of warning: the last time I left these decisions in the hands of my five-year-old daughter Alice, she chose to spend my cash on sponsoring a Cypriot donkey called Lorraine. Clearly she hadn’t been reading my thoughts on animal charities on NPC’s blog.