UK donations can be made using the gift aid system - elan vital claim from the IR roughly 30% of donation (i.e. making it up to the pre-taxed sum at basic rate of tax), higher rate taxpayers (40%) claim the additional sum through personal tax returns.  This accounts for the massive push for donors to give by setting up a regular monthly standing order from their bank accounts, so every penny is worth an extra 30%.  Premies are allocated a gift aid number so that should they make any cash donations (for instance at events) they can write that number on the envelopes provided, tying all donations in to the gift aid system.

The Birmingham event was a regular event (although using regular in this context seems somewhat inappropriate).  I was there only for the last half - the foreign accents were European (a multiplicity), and a few American, if I remember rightly - but mainly European.  It looks like the halls that were once filled with premies from the UK are now filled with premies from all over Europe and some from the rest of the world.  This is a group of people that travel to all or a great many events all over the world.  And they are not all affluent.  Some I know in the UK live in diminished circumstances, laden with debt, spending money on maintaining Rawat's ludicrous image of himself that they would much better spend on the living standards of their families (in my view).  However they are so dependent on the bullshit that, a couple of weeks after returning from an event, they believe the only way they can escape their depression is to book up the next one.  However I'm sure you are aware of this destructive behaviour pattern, if not in yourself then in those you know or have known.  It's a very sorry state of affairs and at my age I am grateful to have started the process of escaping.  The people I have been close to for most of my life seem to have little chance of joining me, but who knows?  There was a time when I believed in it all, and I guess the process by which we realize that it makes no sense is a very gradual one.  Thirteen or fourteen years for me.  I think it was 1990 or 1991 when I was in a tent at the Delhi ashram with the Lord and his western devotees, when Mike Finch made a very humble and heartfelt appeal (and, it must be said, very brave) for help with the feeling that knowledge was not satisfying him (this is how I remember it - not verbatim).  The response went something along the lines of Rawat directing Mike's wife to ensure Mike gets satisfied (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).  I'm no prude, but this response was so inappropriate, so wholly outside the tone of 'aspiration' that it was like one of those situations where you're wandering along, head in the clouds, and you smash, head-on, into a lamp post.  Still, it took me almost forever to get out of the magical thinking, and sometimes the only way I stay out is to talk to myself like a naughty child and give myself the 'get real' speech - it does work though!  I do sometimes feel lonely, my home life and social life fell apart when I got out, but I keep very busy and that helps.  As someone said in a post below, a painful truth is better than a pleasant lie, and for me there really is no choice.  I think I've gone off on a tangent somewhat here but - it's cathartic ...