I made the decision some years ago to only give to animal and 'environment' charities. This was based on my personal (probably deeply flawed) belief that there is more than enough money to go round to take care of people if governments got their act together.
As Junkyard says, much of the UK charity work should be state funded. The same goes for research based charities. The problem I have with those is that the big pharma companies step in and reap huge profits without putting that much back (relative to profits that is).

