If you are looking for a big cultural difference between the UK and the US, look no further.  In the US generally speaking, making money is a sign of success; philanthropy is recognised as a social duty.  Big donors are rewarded with buildings named after them, with public recognition.  In the UK making money is regarded ambivalently.  It is vulgar to demonstrate wealth.  Philanthropy should be done unobtrusively.  Now, as written above, it sounds like an anti-American judgement.  This is not what I am trying to say; in fact, I am trying to say that the more open, robust American attitudes to money lead to giving on a vast scale.  If you doubt that compare the alumni donations of Harvard and Oxford.  I am absolutely amazed that our government has toppled over into this mess, somehow managing to attack large-scale donations to charities as a form of tax-avoidance - this at a time when the Prime Minister is supposed to be encouraging something called the Big Society with more provision for the community from within the community’s own resources.  There is one word for this mess:  lunatic.  A sign, I am afraid, of increasing drift and visionlessness in our government.