Top man

Brilliant

Classic 😂

Michael Sheen reveals he has become a 'not-for-profit actor'
so he can fund charity work
Michael Sheen is a patron for a number of charities, and has taken a huge step away from celebrity culture

Hollywood actor Michael Sheen has revealed how he sold his houses and gave the proceeds to charity as he declared himself to be a “not-for-profit” actor.

The Welsh actor and activist, 52, who handed back his OBE in 2020 so he could criticise the monarchy without seeming a “hypocrite”, believed organising the 2019 Homeless World Cup in Cardiff was a turning point for him.

When funding for the £2million project fell through at the last moment, Sheen sold his own houses to bankroll it.

Speaking to the Big Issue, he said: “I had a house in America and a house here and I put those up and just did whatever it took, it was scary and incredibly stressful. I’ll be paying for it for a long time.”

After Sheen “came out the other side” he realised that his wealth and status could be used in all different kinds of ways.

After recovering financially, he realised “it’s not going to ruin me” so he pledged to carry on using money earned from his acting career to fund future projects and charities.

He said: “There was something quite liberating about going, all right, I’ll put large amounts of money into this or that because I’ll be able to earn it back again.

"I’ve essentially turned myself into a social enterprise, a not-for-profit actor.”

Sheen is a patron for a vast amount of different charities. In 2017 he set up the End High-Cost Credit Alliance, which helps people find more affordable ways of borrowing money.

A staunch supporter of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, and Welsh Independence, Sheen previously donated £50,000 over five years to fund a bursary that helps Welsh students go to Oxford University.

Sheen, known for his intimate character acting, and star of The Damned United, Good Omens and Frost/Nixon, revealed the first “turning point” in his life was after a 72-hour production of The Passion through the streets of his hometown Port Talbot in 2011.

He said: “I got to know people and organisations within my home town that I didn’t know existed.

"Little groups who were trying to help young carers, who had just enough funding to make a tiny difference to a kid’s life by putting on one night a week where they could get out and go bowling or watch a film and just be a kid.

“I would come back to visit three or four months later, and find out that funding had gone and that organisation didn’t exist anymore.”

He said he realised the difference between that child’s life being a little bit better or not was ultimately a small amount of funding.

He said: “And I wanted to help those people. I didn’t just want to be a patron or a supportive voice, I wanted to actually do more than that.

"That’s when I thought, I need to go back and live in Wales again."

SOURCE

I do try to balance out my depressing political posts whenever I can.

Some people do a lot more than their bit to make a difference

Nothing earth-shattering, just personal "good luck", but it's great (not to mention a miracle) when something actually goes right.

Long story short, I decided to buy some new  cluttery    cultery    clitr...   knives and forks etc.  Decided on the set I wanted and started researching prices.  It ended up as a toss-up between a shop I'd never heard of (although I have no doubts whatsoever it was completely kosher) and eBay.  The shop was around a fiver cheaper.  Eventually I decided to go with eBay - better the devil you know and all that - and duly went to the checkout.  When I got there it turned out that eBay is currently running a promo I hadn't heard about and lo and behold, have nine quid (15%) off, Paul.

Result.

I actually saved money by going for the most expensove option. 

Similarly I was punting around for Natex. Wonderful stuff that Marmite lovers eventually find.
Been difficult to get hold of during Covid so large amounts looked for
Price has gone up substantially
The last guys I bought from were good so I favoured them.
If I bought more than 6 jars there was a discount. No problem. I'll take a load

But the discount took me under the minimum for free delivery
So I added more on
Looking good.
Honey popped up asking to check prices, rarely any good but worth going for
Result - discount !
Which took me under the minimum for free delivery - again
Upped the amount again

22 jars should last a while

Rarely gives a discount but its free and I've had a few quid of free money - the best sort !

Ukraine war: Fortnite owner Epic Games
raises £37m for humanitarian efforts


Fortnite's virtual store has adopted Ukrainian colours

Epic Games says it has raised more than $50m (£37m) to aid humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

The Fortnite publisher announced on 21 March it would donate all proceeds from in-game sales, including cosmetic in-game items and virtual currency bought in a shop or online, until 3 April.

And Xbox is donating the fee it would usually take on items bought by players in Fortnite.

The amount raised so far is greater than that given by some countries.

A statement on the Fortnite website said it would send funds "as quickly as we can".

"We're not waiting for the actual funds to come in from our platform and payment partners, which can take a while depending on how the transaction was processed. As transactions are reported, we'll log them and send the funds to the humanitarian relief organisations within days."

Epic is sending money to Unicef, Direct Relief, the UN Refugee Agency, and the UN World Food Programme.





Epic's fundraising joins other efforts by games companies and their fans to raise money for the victims of the war in Ukraine.

Humble Bundle, for example, sells collections of video games online, with proceeds usually benefitting both the developers and charities.

But in its latest offering, Humble has raised more than £10m exclusively for charities benefitting Ukraine. It is providing a bundle of 120 games and items usually valued at more than £1,800 that it now offers for a minimum donation of only £30.52.

Kamini Tiwari, vice-president of social impact at Humble, praised the players who have put up their money to get the games. "We're very, very happy that our community is leaning in to support us," she said. "I think they also, like us, recognise that need is so great.

"We are constantly humbled - pardon the pun - by our community. Throughout the year, and particularly during times of crisis and disaster, it's been great to see that across the gaming industry so many others are leaning in as well."

Chucklefish Games, makers of WarGroove and Starbound, is one of the independent developers based in London that has offered up its games to the bundle.

Alexis Trust, communications manager at the studio, said she felt it was their "duty to help those in need".

She said the firm's partners, Lithuania-based Hidden Layer Games, which made the game Inmost, is "a two-man team from Ukraine and Russia".

"Throughout the project the team experienced first-hand the difficulty of working between borders during a time of political tension, and so made the difficult decision to move together to Lithuania where their dream project could actually become a reality.

"When the Russian military invaded Ukraine, we felt that it was our duty to extend that help to other families in whatever capacity we could."


Chucklefish released indie hit Wargroove in 2019

But Humble isn't the only bundle right now aiming to help those in Ukraine. There is also the now-completed itch.io bundle, which raised £4.7m by offering up 1,000 games in exchange for a minimum donation of £7.56.

Brandon Sheffield, creative director of Necrosoft Games, organised the bundle. He told the BBC he thinks the cause "really resonated with people".

And, he said, it was surprisingly easy to persuade developers of indie hits like Celeste and Superhot to help.

"Believe it or not, it didn't take very much convincing at all," he said. "Everyone was pretty much ready to help. The publisher Raw Fury joined the itch.io platform just so that they could put four of their games into this."

The charities which benefitted from the itch.io bundle were the International Medical Corps, as well as the Voices of Children Foundation - a Ukrainian charity that provides support to children affected by trauma caused by war.

"I feel like that's incredibly important for the future of Ukraine," Mr Sheffield said. "I chose this local organisation that's already there.

"Because they're there, they've been like impromptu shelters, going around and using the money that they've been donated to try to protect the people in Kyiv and other places where they can actually access them."

And Andy Pearson, chief marketing officer of British publisher PQube Games, that has donated games for the bundle, compared what was happening in the games industry to some of the big musical fundraising events of the past.

"It's phenomenal. It exceeded the initial expectations and then continued to go on from there.

"It was amazing. I am thinking now - has this been done before? And it has - it's like Live Aid - those big, big events where you had lots of creators all coming together in one versus a single person trying to contribute. That's what's really helped establish this."

SOURCE