Fuck Oxfam

I totally had not realised the person earlier described as Sean Bean was meant to be JKR. FFS.
Apologies if this has been covered.

apple.news/ApZUbMIduS7uRhKyUzZ860Q

Sorry if linked already but was Mariella Frostrup already a defender of JKR / women having mainstream opinions, or is this a new thing?

https://twitter.com/MrsNickyClark/status/1666712435485491203

It will depend on what a donor wants to give towards. I would happily donate to a charity that promotes a network of support for the elderly and their carers, which I understand used to be Age UKs main focus. If I donate now, I would have no say in any lobbying they do, and may not agree with it. Another example is people might support work Stonewall does to help LGB and T people who face homelessness, or are living with HIV, but who are aghast at their lobbying activities especially where conflicts exist with other protected characteristics.

My last visit to the National Trust was marred by the focus on LGBT. Lots and lots about one heir having to flee to Italy because of "misbehaviour" with guardsmen, virtually nothing about the sister who managed and refurbished the property in his absence. She too might be a worthwhile role model.

I agree that local charities can be a mixed bag. Wasn't Aimee involved with a youth group in the midlands well after the Green scandal. When I looked on the website there did not seem to be any obvious safeguarding policies.

However there are lots of good local causes. I am confident my regular donation to the local disabled swimming group will help pay for minibuses and for biscuits and ribena after sessions. I know that this weekly trip is important for a group of mainly house bound people. There are any number of other worthwhile local activities. A friend is encouraging me to join her in her weekly coffee mornings for her fellow disabled ex service people. I am not sure about the time but I can certainly give her some money.

In the end surely the solution is some sort of approval rating for charities, large and small, with focus on safeguarding, financial checks and balances etc. Sport England has a useful ClubMark certification for volunteer run sports clubs. Something similar.

In terms of overseas charities, is CAFOD ok? A friend is a strong supporter and it would seem to have useful links within Catholic communities overseas. I know that a lot of UN ones have very high operating costs and appointments are often very political.

It's a bandwagon isn't it. Drinks companies, banks, all these groups whose services and products have nothing to do with this topic are promoting LBTQ-whatever.

This is interesting, from graham lineham

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/oxfam-when-misogyny-is-the-mission?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMjIxNTcxMjcsInBvc3RfaWQiOjEyNjQxMjMwNiwiaWF0IjoxNjg2MDgxMjUwLCJleHAiOjE2ODg2NzMyNTAsImlzcyI6InB1Yi02NzMwOSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.raNv-046bn3_9GH1L7kUpueQN1pjEz7elxwhFMJ4ryA&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Julie Bindel is really on a roll with this at the moment DM article

I worked for a massive, popular, wealthy charity and was told by a former volunteer (at a fundraising event) that just 10p in every £1 donated was spent on the charity’s beneficiaries, the rest went on offices and admin. Stopped me donating to them.

So the people holding government responsibility for this area to copy in now, I think are Lucy Fraser MP and Stuart Andrew MP.

With the DCMS’ digital brief lost to the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the charity sector now has its eighth Minister in six years, and its 13th minister in 13 years, which doesn’t help make stable relationships, support detailed oversight or innovative, well-informed policy making.

https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-sector-eighth-secretary-state-six-years-sunak-shuffles-team/policy-and-politics/article/1812575

https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/charities-respond-to-dcms-shake-up-as-lucy-frazer-announced.html

They published the deleted tweets including what is OK to say according to the "legends" at Mermaids so Pink News are unwittingly spreading the word 😁

Crikey. They're laying it on a bit thick, surely? I read that as 'savaged by beasts' at first.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/05/31/innocent-drinks-mermaids-tweet-deleted

"Innocent Drinks savaged by bigots"..

@PotteringPondering excellent, very well written! And you are right, TERF is a very offensive slur & I think more action needs to be taken. Bigot is another label commonly thrown around. I'll link an article from Pink News which referred to "bigots" savaging Innocent smoothies Mermaid charity tweet.

Your post @mommyisbest made me think about the distinction between deserving and undeserving poor in receiving charity support, though now instead of the “feckless” todays undeserving poor are those who won’t buy into gender identity or critical race theory. I wouldn’t be keen to approach any of them for help.

In fact a disciplined and assiduous pluralism is the only way to get out of this. Our beliefs are our beliefs. That is all. We do not have to prove tolerance and acceptance to one another. We have to behave tolerantly and decently

100% agree with you MommyisBest As a society that’s exactly what we need to focus on.

And thanks to everyone who has written to Oxfam and copied in their MPs and the Advertising Standards Authority, all this helps to raise the level of thinking about how charity advocacy should be regulated.

As private donors and taxpayers funding government grants to charities we should all be concerned about regulation in the charity sector (though it’s good that PPs are rightly noting that all charities are not the same!)

I haven’t thought about this issue that much before so this is just quick Google research, but it looks like political/government attention on charities seems to have been diluted a lot lately at the highest levels of this Conservative government.

Any apparent loss of focus does not seem good at a time when the work of charities is needed more than ever due to war, international crises, the global Covid pandemic, massive economic disparities and the cost of living and climate crises, and the resources of governments are stretched more than ever.

The Conservatives have not used the specific ministerial brief in government with responsibility for charities since 2022, the job of ‘Minister for Civil Society’, which had been set up by Blair and continued by successive governments. From what I can see, civil society has now been rolled in with loads of other responsibilities at Ministerial level, which can only make the focus and accountability of government much less visible on the charity sector.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_for_Civil_Society

The Minister for Civil Society (now vacant) was a position within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the Government of the United Kingdom. It concerned and directly supported charities, volunteering and social enterprise.

There’s a lefty woke bro in charge of Oxfam, they are the worst kind of women haters in my opinion.

Apologies if this is a repeat.

I expect that someone on the board of directors for Oxfam Canada may also have been ‘advising’ on LGBT comms policy.

https://www.oxfam.ca/who-we-are/our-people/our-team/

F Johnson…. What a surprise!

Oxfam can call the video a mistake all it wants, we all know that's far from the truth.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned much is that (last time I checked) the video still started with the promotion of bilateral mastectomies for girls. Charities would be censured for the promotion of self harm or anorexia, why is this OK?

Please note that this article didn't bother to include the image in question.

Typical bloody Graun.

Yes, as plenty of us who have worked in the charity sector know very well, small local charities can be an absolute shitshow. Oxfam are clearly awful, as are Amnesty, but that's not a good reason to assume the smaller charities are automatically a better bet.

Additionally, lobbying is an important part of what charities do and they're often the ones with the expertise to do it. Many problems need addressing at source as much as they need the symptoms treating. The problem isn't with lobbying itself, it's with the things being lobbied about.

(I should stress that the guide wasn’t just about gender. It also decreed that, when expressing support for others, staff should not say they “stand with” them, because this could “alienate people who are unable to stand”. I forget what the staff are meant to say instead. “Sit with”? But that could alienate people with haemorrhoids. It really is a minefield. Although I shouldn’t say that either, because it could alienate people who have had all their limbs blown off, and therefore struggle to do anything.)

I want to marry him.

Small local charities can't deal with distant earthquakes and floods though. When I wanted to give to a Pakistan disaster the usual suspects were very slow off the mark but I looked around and found a Muslim chaarity that seemed trustworthy, so did it through them.

I completely agree. Many of the large charities have seemingly lost sight of their essential mission. Amnesty being another example. They are essentially just large corporations. Smaller, local charities are much more focused on delivering to meet an identified need.

Excellent article in the Telegraph pointing out my earlier argument - what on earth are Oxfam doing campaigning against transphobia when they are meant to be relieving poverty?
www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/06/07/oxfam-jk-rowling-terf-cartoon/

The Charities Commission are getting busy. Mermaids, the LGBA court case, and now this.

I wonder whether at some point they will discover that there is something adrift with the sector as a whole. A small number of people, who seem to move from job to job, being paid very high salaries, living in a PC bubble and a low proportion of income being spent on actually delivering services.

My epiphany came when moving my mother with dementia into sheltered housing and cleared a skip load of charity begging letters, though the chuggers who operated where I used to work did not inspire confidence. I don't disbelieve Daily Mail rants about the National Trust and the RNLI, indeed have heard first hand how the former treated employees in Cornwall. AgeUK were completely unhelpful and seemed only interested in getting my contact details, as for the NSPCC, Red Nose Day, etc. Too often charities seem to have decided that their focus should be lobbying rather than service delivery. You need the latter to inform the former, and anyway I want to donate to charities who keep administration costs to a minimum and who deliver to those who need help.

I now avoid big charities preferring to give regular donations to a local swimming for the disabled charity. DD volunteered for them when she was at school, so I know they are good people and the money goes directly to activities their clients enjoy. Far better than contributing to Oxfam's advertising budget. Perhaps there ought to be some sort of quality standard for charities. A proper ratio being spent on service delivery, rather than administration fundraising or lobbying, proportionate salaries for senior people - and a fair wage for the more junior. Proper adherence to the equalities act including recognition that some vulnerable groups need single sex spaces.

I think it's to do with the demographic profile of all those involved in decision making.

Young, not widely read, swallowing fashionable opinions without research or critical thinking.

They don't know about Nazi anti-semitic propaganda - despite supposedly being anti-fascist, they know nothing about actual fascists. And their entire social and professional bubble repeats the "JKR is a transphobe" blether, again without knowledge or thinking.