Macca’s cash hard to swallow

IN RELATION to the article ‘Macca’s chips in for RSL’, (The Mail, 31 March).
Question: Since when does a wholly American-owned corporation, with hand on heart, salute the spirit of the Anzacs?
Answer: if there’s a chance their cynical Anzac Day sponsorship will be swallowed by the gullible.
The local McDonald’s has poked around in the back of the sofa and found $500 – a rounding error on their balance sheet – for Upwey RSL, and in return has been handed a small fortune in terms of positive media coverage.
Not a bad return on investment.
Let’s hope that Tecoma McDonald’s proposed ‘community grants program’ is nothing like the contemptuous Ronald McDonald House PR exercise.
This is where public donations are trumpeted as those of McDonald’s itself, where tax breaks and government subsidies abound, and where their outlay on corporate advertising far exceeds the net contribution of McDonald’s to parents in need.
While this all-American corporation tries to appear dinky-di, with its rebranding as ‘Macca’s’ and its flying of the Australian flag at its outlets, it doesn’t hesitate to use its iron fist (inside a pretty velvet glove) whenever locals try to preserve the character of their neighbourhood.
And when I read how McDonald’s is resolutely ignoring the pleas of health experts to halt its attempts to install an outlet in the Monash Children’s Hospital, then I am forced to impute the lowliest of motives behind McDonald’s attempt to dress up in a slouch hat.
Karl Williams,
Tecoma.