Egremont Today is a ridiculously unprofessional outfit. At the end of our busiest year ever, when our circulation has risen to more than 8,700, reaching all the way from Wath Brow to Eskdale, and the demand for advertising has kept even our 24 pages a month at full stretch, our accountant shows that we have made a measly £268 profit for the entire year. What would a truly modern political party make of such inefficiency?
Where has the money gone to we'd like to know. Our accountant has just come up with the answer. Over the last year alone we have actually given away more than £8,000. That includes acknowledgements of the services of a number of distributors who ask for no personal payment to deliver to substantial parts of our far flung area but name charities, like Copeland Rungwe Link, Prostate Cancer Reseach, St Bees Priory, Crab Fair, Rosehill Youth Theatre, the Hensingham Centre and the Samaritans which they would like us to support. It proves an effective way of getting an essential job done while shaking out some of our income to the benefit of causes cherished by active groups in our community, and we should warmly welcome any other offers that would allow us to extend our circulation in any area, including Cleator Moor. About £1,500 of our donations have a link to the services of volunteer helpers. A further £1,500 goes to support Copeland Labour Party, and no, the Labour Party does not subsidise Egremont Today, and it never has done.
We have also made independent donations of more than £650 to support a research into a variety of medical conditions, including meningitis and leukemia, often in memory of dearly loved friends who have been victims of these diseases, and have given our backing to the outstanding work of organisations like Hospice at Home, Macmillan Nurses, Castle Mount and West Cumbria Society for the Blind, who support vulnerable local people, and of course to units at West Cumberland Hospital, such as the Lung Unit, Palliative Care, and the hospital services supported by the Mayor's Charities. Other local charities, including Friends of the Castle, Egremont Amenities Committee, who with our help provided the fencing around the recycling bays, the Charles & Kathleen Dunnery Children's Fund and Crab Fair, have together benefited by £1,450.
Our biggest single donation has been £2,400 to connect Kisondela School in Tanzania to the electric grid and enable students to turn the lights on at night and access computer services. It is no longer necessary for them to use paraffin lamps to light them to bed in crowded dormitories. Our story of this enterprise caught the attention of Lady Jill Butler, wife of Lord Robin Butler of Brockwell, retiring Master of University College Oxford and former Cabinet Secretary to Mrs Thatcher, and she has made a donation of her own to support schools in Tanzania.
Of course we could not have done any of this without the support of our advertisers, and that in turn is due to the remarkable loyalty of our readers who are constantly passing on comments, critical as well as appreciative, to the editor and deputy editor when they are out on their delivery rounds. They believe that Egremont Today belongs to them, and of course they are quite right. It is in the name of the people of Egremont and District that we have given our backing to work that they support.