"Re your OP Dave, if there was a fundraiser for defence spending I would not give.
Likewise for road repairs, refuse collection or railway investment.

I think those things vitally important and underfunded, but should be funded from taxation like defence spending. "

Several things. Charity, as well as frequently being emotional blackmail, is also big business. Sure, a few charities do their damnedest to make sure that the absolute maximum amount raised goes to the cause they claim it does. But many use a puzzlingly-large proportion of their take in meeting "administrative costs," including paying large salaries to their head-office staff. One feature of giving to charity is that, once you've given, it's hard to track precisely what your money's been used for. Mother Teresa raised tens of millions of charity dollars over decades, a huge proportion of which, unbeknownst to her donors, went towards expanding her convents in order to propagate the word of the Lord. In the meantime, hundreds of her charges died of neglect in terrible conditions, lacking even the most basic standards of hygiene and medical provision. Who knew!

Also, many charities use aggressive tactics such as accosting people in the street, cold-calling vulnerable people and rattling tins in your face on both sides of you as you leave the supermarket. And I can't understand why one of the richest economies in the world needs the British Heart Foundation or cancer charities. Seems to me that being indulgent with non-doms and other tax-avoiders and fighting useless bloody wars overseas, including by proxy (which is why we arm unsavoury regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Israel) takes priority over what governments are there to do first and foremost, govern in the interest of ALL their people, and that should include a big safety net for those at the bottom of society.

You're dead right about those things that should be met from taxation, Keith. But your list is rather on the short side.