Wednesday 5 August 2015

Some simple rules when it comes to doling out millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money


Don’t give public money to an organisation led by someone who:

(1) despite having attended a traditional British girls boarding school and a good university, dresses like a clown

(2) is named after a comic-book hero.

(3) makes boastful claims about themselves, e.g. ‘I’ve got so much energy, it’s going to fry me like an egg’ – it suggests a bloated ego.

(4) who talks absolute bollocks, e.g. ‘We make the mistake of thinking that only parents can love a child. This is wrong. The human species can love a child.’ This sort of vaporous nonsense suggests a lack of mental clarity.

(5) who is morbidly obese (unless they’re running a charity for the morbidly obese) – it suggests a lack of self-control.

(6) who is worshipped by David Cameron, Boris Johnson AND Alan Yentob. Being hero-worshipped by the great and the good (?) usually ends in tears. Or court.

(7) who awards themselves a £90,000 a year salary for being a saint. Whatever happened to doing good being its own reward?

I’m not saying Kids Company hasn’t done a lot of good work. And I’m not saying Camila Batmanghelidjh has done anything wrong (okay, she used part of a recent government grant to pay staff – a purpose for which it was not intended – but she may well have been confused regarding the conditions of the payment). What I am saying is that we really must stop government - local or national - dishing out our money to charities: which people or charities we donate our money to should be our affair, and ours alone.

6 comments:

  1. Also
    (8) don't give taxpayers' money to an outfit which steals cash from its employees by deducting tax from their salaries and not paying the money thus deducted over to HMRC (according to this article in the Mail).

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    1. But they're such lovely, big-hearted people that you can't expect them to follow the same rules as those wicked, heartless capitalists who create all the wealth that ends up funding "charities" - oh, I forgot, public sector money comes from a vast, magic money-tree, which only needs to be watered with tears of compassion.

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  2. Throwing money (unfortunately our money) at this "charity" ticked lot of pc boxes. The prime beneficiaries are black youths from some pretty squalid urban areas. Journalists claim to have seen some of these youngsters being handed envelopes of cash. It's also been noted that the place was empty until the youths arrived for their hand outs. This hardly seems like a sensible organisation to pass our hard earned dosh to. We have no control over what they're spending the money on.
    It was only a couple of weeks ago that generous Dave gave them further 3 million quid! FFS!
    I do try not to swear but ...

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    1. What's so depressing is just how much of our money is handed over to cowboy outfits like this one - thousands of the bloody things - without our say-so. And what makes it so utterly sodding infuriating is the moral preening indulged in by the politicians and quangocrats who dish it out - as if it was their money rather than ours! I'd be very happy for the likes of Boris and Dave and Alan to support Kids Company using their own (considerable) wealth - that's their business: but I object to them making themselves look good on my dollar.

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  3. A Taxpayer writes8 August 2015 at 09:47

    I saw the Channel 4/ Frei interview with "the one they call Yentob" and he kept referring to 36,000 "Chillies" which was confusing. Apart from our taxes pouring into Kid's Company since 1996 I was reminded that the Creative Director of the BBC [strange title] sits on a £6 m + tax-funded pension.

    I believe Batmanjelly has had two film offers which should compensate her for loss of earnings. One is a biopic of her life starring Christopher Biggins [the nation's chief celebrity mourner] and the other is the lead in "Carmen Miranda - The Desperate Years" which will feature her in a series of Tutti-Frutti Turbans.

    Or as she is obviously a great favourite in certain government circles [the Cabinet Office, Oliver Letwin etc] why not give her a job in the Department for International Development. These boys really know how to spray taxpayer's money around.

    Or she could get an M&S advertising contract [curtain materials] followed by a seat in the House of Lord's.

    Or.... [That's enough. Blog Ed]

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    1. Yes, Yentob. If his recent behaviour inside the BBC has been accurately reported - i.e. phoning Newsnight to complain they'd given the "charity" of which he is chairman of trustees no right to reply, and then (allegedly) monstering news correspondent Lucy Manning as she prepared a report on the organisation - then I can see absolutely no excuse for not instantly sacking him. At the very least he should be suspended while the BBC investigates his behaviour. Nobody else would get away with this - why should he?

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