Fuck Oxfam

It's not a battle for women only. Many, many men agree with pushing back against the trans cult. I had a few things to pick up today and am heading to B&Q instead because of this. It's about £30's worth, but still...

He obviously applied for the job before the cartoon came out, but did he know it was in the making? I don’t know what connection there is between Oxfam GB and Oxfam International. He presumably presided over the language guide though. I really hope NEF doesn’t go woke, they’ve done some good work.

"Oxfam chief Danny Sriskandarajah is quitting"
www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1781576/oxfam-jk-rowling-pride-anti-trans-cartoon

The Express are reporting that Oxfams CEO is standing down because of this

The main costs of many / most charities is salaries, even where services are delivered by volunteers someone needs to support them. Lots of charities try to minimise support staff because of how it looks, but then you have people doing their own admin even at CEO level, which isn’t value for money or efficient. So much of what the sector does is relationship-based. You can involve volunteers to some degree, but there are many functions you need to know someone with the right skills is going to be there at specific times and with enough responsibility and authority to make decisions, and that they are going to be there consistently rather than people accessing services being bounced from one person to another.

They got funding from the DfID (or whatever it's called now). Not sure what the current state of play is.
https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/oxfam-gb-banned-bidding-aid-funding-less-month-reinstated/management/article/1712076

The 31 million comes from the Government Foreign Aid Budget of the UK. Gifted by us tax payers of course.
Nothing to do with Gift Aid - Oxfam has a number of income streams.

Oh absolutely. Achieving aim 1 could well lead to followup aim 2. As, indeed, it did for Stonewall - first with the general equality (2010 EA = achieved), moving on to marriage equality (2015 achieved) , and as you say that could have been followed by a legitimate aim to uphold those laws.

But that shift of aim perhaps needs more official scrutiny for a charity to retain status. Otherwise you end up with aim 3 being 'keep the charity paying my salary'.

All good points. I think that this exposes a weakness of relying on a regulatory environment (see also healthcare, schools and many others). It is impossible to create a regulatory framework for a diverse environment that doesn’t also create perverse incentives and undesirable outcomes.

Regulation should be a safety net, to protect against serious wrongdoing, but we increasingly rely on it to set sector goals and outcomes, and that is distorting service delivery and creating a management structure that is about servicing the regulator, not achieving the organisation’s core goals.

Added to which, even for those charities that have arguably achieved an aim, that doesn't mean it'll stay achieved.

In the case of Stonewall, even after legal equality was reached there was still plenty of useful work they could've done. They just chose not to do it. Gays and lesbians are still discriminated against because of their sexuality in the UK and not just by Stonewall themselves despite the legislation. That didn't make it go away. They could've provided legal support for people in that position, and training on the law for organisations and businesses that was actually accurate. Both of those things would be good and legitimate, beneficial to wider society and they'd have been in an excellent place to provide them.

In which case there is still a need, or maybe other central ways of channeling that money to Fatima.

I also think that there is plenty of scrutiny on the charity sector already. All of the big charities will have some sort of statement on their website about their finances and salaries, breaking down where their money comes from and where the money is spent. All this information is public domain. Charities are also required to submit accounts to the Charity Commission (or OSCR in Scotland) and anyone can look at those. There's far more transparency on the charity sector finances than there is on other businesses.

I also don't agree that charities shouldn't be spending on salaries - although they will have to justify to their donors that their salaried staff are worth the money. I also disagree that keeping money in the bank is a bad thing, depending on the focus of the charity. Charities involved in disaster response (not just Oxfam, others like Red Cross, Save the Children) absolutely SHOULD be keeping money in the bank to fund an emergency response by chartering aircraft or whatever.

Oxfam has been responding to disasters worldwide since the 1940s. It's really sad that the charity has been led in this direction by a handful of very shouty people at head office who are pulling the charity in a totally different direction from its core purpose.

Got it. Thanks Firey.

there should be a time limit on them existing and a proper scrutiny of what they are achieving and if they achieve it, they need to be closed down.

That would work for some types of charities, but not for others - in many cases achieving their aim doesn't remove the need for their existence.

For example you could use those criteria to judge Stonewall: aim - equal rights for gay and lesbian people in the UK; achievement - legal equality reached. Job done.

But if a charity aims, say, to send search and rescue dogs to the site of every earthquake they could achieve their aim.of 10 dogs at every earthquake, but they'd still be needed because they haven't (and didn't aim to) stopped earthquakes happening. So they need to keep sending dogs. Or the phone credit for refugees that I linked above - they help about 2000 people a month, but there are more in need of help every day - and there's no model for it to attach to as 'business as usual'. Their aim isn't to lobby governments or phone companies to take over the job, because that simply wouldn't happen. Their aim is just to give Fatima in Lebanon £7 a month on her phone so she can use it to apply for asylum online, talk to her mum who is a refugee in another country, and call the emergency services when the camp catches fire. They achieve that, but there's always another Fatima, and always another month.

I don't think the government gives direct support to Oxfam. Charities usually get money from government via gift aid, which is linked to how much is donated and not something they could remove from one charity and not others (unless the charity had done something so bad that the charity commission struck them off, but I don't see that happening here)
Or charities may have government contracts to provide services. I'm not aware of Oxfam doing a lot of this kind of thing in the UK, as most of their work is overseas, but I could be wrong. I'd imagine most of the £37m quoted above would be gift aid.

I see boycott Wickes is now trending on Twitter.

Clearly they don't think women buy DIY products.

I've said this about charities for ages, since I worked in a few and one we reported to the Charities Commission several times and no action was ever taken, there should be a time limit on them existing and a proper scrutiny of what they are achieving and if they achieve it, they need to be closed down. If they don't achieve it and never move anything along, then they need to be closed down. The aim would be to make it self sustaining or Business as Usual in terms of their activities. Especially if they have government money.

I'll add to that there needs to be a standard that only a percentage of funds should be going to staff, the majority of the funds need to go to the cause whatever that is. I used to award funds and audit projects and it was one issue that I used to be quite strict about - funds should not be used to prop up salaries but used to 'do' whatever it was they were supposed to be doing.

£37 million? Fuck me.

I am disgusted that a charity that purports to be a supporter of those in poverty in third world countries is actually embroiling itself in the pro-transgender issue, let alone stooping to this level.. Placing itself firmly against women, half the population.

Abso-bloody-lutely.

This is why I only donate to smaller charities. The big ones become bloated, corporatised, and corrupt.

If your MP is a Tory, Triptoqueen, your letter may have some effect. I hope most sincerely that it does.

Letter to my MP ( I don't spend a lot of time on this - just want to draw his attention to it)

Dear XXXX,
I am writing to say how angry I am over the misogynistic cartoon produced by Oxfam to vilify J K Rowling because of her views on transgender women having access to women's safe places. Portraying her like some sort of evil demon.

I am disgusted that a charity that purports to be a supporter of those in poverty in third world countries is actually embroiling itself in the pro-transgender issue, let alone stooping to this level.. Placing itself firmly against women, half the population..

I volunteer in the XXXXXX Oxfam, as do many retired women, and when I see that the the Government supports Oxfam to the tune of 31.7 million pounds, thereby supporting this misogynistic behaviour, I am furious and think the Goverment needs to reappraise whether this charity deserves to be funded to this extent if it chooses to carry on in this unacceptable way.

Yours sincerely,

The virtue signallers can only fund their shit off the back of the work of the doers.

I’m so sad and disappointed that the pandemic didn’t open everyone’s eyes to the fact it’s the low status, low-paid workers who keep this country moving, not the billionaire “wealth creators” who create more wealth for themselves. I mean, I think everyone noticed, but it didn’t change anything, we were all harried back to work asap, “back to normal” when normal was so shit.

Sorry, off-topic, but your words reminded me of that.

What really needs to happen is that the people who want to be in the political campaigning and lobbying go off and set up their own wee pressure group.

The thing thats most annoying is that charities are not supposed to engage in political lobbying. They are supposed to operate only within the aims of their charity's remit.

Yet what's happening is a huge number of charities are going way beyond that.

Thats frustrating and tbh I think means far too much money is spent on schemes that the charity supporters aren't remotely interested in. Its fundamentally dishonest.

I do think there needs to be a massive crack down on it. Unfortunately that in itself is hugely political because so many of these charities are left leaning to begin with. And that boils my piss because ultimately the people that charities are set up to help miss out whilst the money is funnelled into politics and propping up the employees of the charity sector itself. Its about as far removed from left wing ideals as you can get. More frustratingly, this opinion - like others - is labelled as 'right wing' - purely because of the political bias going on within these political circles for their own indulgence.

This is where Doers v Virtue Signallers really collide. The virtue signallers can only fund their shit off the back of the work of the doers.

Good for you for withholding your labour from Oxfam.

I have been at Oxfam for about 8 or 9 years and agree with the Private Eye cartoon - when I started first all the communication we had from Head Office in Oxford was about a new well-digging project, or famine response, or how they'd partnered with an organisation somewhere in Asia/Africa to provide jobs and income to women. Campaigning was about raising awareness, drawing attention to that fact that whatever % of girls aren't in school, or infant mortality. The organisation has completely changed in the last 5 years probably, the Haiti thing (which happened in 2010 but came out about 2018) meant that a lot of people in senior positions at Head Office either stepped down or were sidelined. New start. But then all this nonsense started about inclusion and pronouns, the shop is filled with Pride merchandise (which nobody buys) - it just really misses the mark.

I have said it before on threads like this but the "type" of people who work (salaried) at Head Office and the "type" of people who volunteer are completely different. What really needs to happen is that the people who want to be in the political campaigning and lobbying go off and set up their own wee pressure group. An extinction rebellion, just stop oil sort of thing. Fill their boots with their gender woo before they destroy Oxfam completely.

Communication in Oxfam is APPALLING, they send out bulletins to stores which are rarely read, nobody in Oxford actually gets off their arse to visit stores in Plymouth, or Inverness, or York or anywhere else. They just sit in their little woke bubble in Cowley, thinking that everyone else in the organisation is JUST LIKE THEM. They also seem to forget that without volunteers, they wouldn't have a job.

I used to work in the head office of another (now defunct) retailer and their rule was that everyone in Head Office had to spend at least two full days a year working in a shop somewhere in the UK. People moaned but it was such a good idea.

It's so sad that the charity which has been going since the 1940s has been destroyed like this in such a short time. I will miss my former colleagues very much but onwards and upwards.

Thanks Clymene - I'd worked out you could see more of it if you googled the headline than by clicking the link, but I'd not heard of that. There is the occasional article I want to read!