It is a common comment I hear about the recession: “It’ll be good for the charities with all their shops”.

But it isn’t good for charities at the moment. The squeeze is affecting their funds, and forcing many to start to close services down. Financial investments have fallen sharply in value. Corporate donations have ‘fallen off a cliff’ to quote one charity. And donations are starting to drop too. Job losses are hitting the charity sector too: the NSPCC is planning to make 150 redundant.

And the consequence? A hospice is already starting to consider whether it will be able to stay open after the next three months. The children’s hospice Naomi House has had to close services down because it lost so much money in the Icelandic banking collapse. The squeeze on hospices makes me particularly angry as they are under-funded from the public purse anyway. Hospices provide so many services that would otherwise have to be provided by the NHS – yet children’s hospices get only 4% of their funding from Primary Care Trusts. They are so dependent upon charitable donations. The £30,000 now spent on the now-famous NHS Party at the Hilton could make such a difference at Brian House. I look forward to hearing what the PCT will do for cases such as this.

Instead, we see groups such as the Salvation Army opening new soup kitchens for those whose budgets have been squeezed so much that they can scarce afford to feed themselves. The Salvation Army is surely proof that goodness does still exist.