Oxfam's analysis of its 'inclusive language crises'

I'm not sure that's true.

What we have now is de facto self ID, because the Gender Recognition Act was passed 20 years ago while everyone was distracted by Iraq and fox hunting and we've all recently woken up to the fact that it is now very difficult to prevent men from accessing women's spaces.

The status quo is what was imposed on us without any consultation or consent, and that is what we are fighting against.

I walked past an Oxfam shop in Epping this week and saw the usual sign 'we welcome him/her/they/them'.etc etc in the window.

What does that even mean? How are they talking about you in the third person if you decide to enter their shop?

Quite.

Much contact with the head offices of large charities does a really effective job of making you re focus all donations to small, local charities where the people doing the work have actual beliefs and a grip on reality and actually care about the on the ground work. As opposed to mostly writing very exciting bids with all the current buzz words and fads, having lots of meetings with other ivory tower charity senior staff and essentially focusing on the smooth running of the gravy train.

I have worked for charities in London for years and this is a very common scenario: charity pays workers peanuts and use the fact that the staff usually really want to help make a difference to people or animals' welfare to keep wages low using the excuse 'we can't afford to pay you more, we are a charity'.

Meanwhile the CEO and directors enjoy a nice, fat wage and the trustees are wealthy people enjoying a vanity project.

Charities usually have a high staff turnover because of it and they also use volunteer to plug the gaps to do the work that realistically would need to be done by paid staff.

It has made me lose a lot of faith in the sector in general.

I volunteered briefly for Oxfam, they were letting the charity shop where I was doing a weekly shift fall apart and the managers and volunteers were working in dodgy if not dangerous conditions. I left it after a few weeks because I refused to support the charity any longer.

Oxfam is not the only charity to underpay workers on the frontline, others like St Mungo's have had that reputation for years. I have also seen a lot of bullying of staff, including those with mental health issues and disabilities, by charity management who at the same time pride themselves on supporting vulnerable clients...

I think it is a bit like the NHS where frontline staff can be treated appallingly.

I would just like to know the ‘identity’ of the two overseas employees who have each received upwards of £300,000.00 this year.

I walked past an Oxfam shop in Epping this week and saw the usual sign 'we welcome him/her/they/them'.etc etc in the window. It actually made me want to throw up..i'm not even sure why, it's just i don't think i've ever hated an organisation more than Oxfam..how they can have that sign up after all the bollocks they've written helping to erase women...bastards.

It's fighting to maintain the social structures around gender that we have now.

LOL. Men don’t want women to have a space where we can talk to each other free of male supervision, in case we start plotting our liberation. “Trans rights” are reactionary male tantrums in response to the recent progress women have made.

At the weekend I took some stuff to BHF, who said they had too many donations and take it to Oxfam (across the road). Told her I didn't donate to Oxfam on principle (in retrospect wish I'd said 'to child rapists').

Personally I will never support a charity like Oxfam that uses chuggers, it preys on vulnerable people, impedes people getting about their day and ultimately just lines the pockets of private business for years before money actually goes to the charity

Yes, ordinary people think that aid is basically kindness: somebody needs something that you have more than enough of, so you give them what they need, you have the satisfaction of having helped somebody in need, then everybody is happy.

Absolutely not; money 'given' in 'aid' by governments is no different from money invested anywhere else to get goods or services, or to gain advantage and control. It's ironic that most of the world now quite rightly condemns slavery, yet aid can be a much more crafty and subtle way of effectively perpetuating the same status quo - but on a national level, rather than individual.

The IMF (and their cronies) is nothing more than a loan shark: they aren't lending you money because they want to help you out and maybe earn a little extra in the long run for their effort; they're on the lookout for how they can take you down until you are utterly helpless and dependent on them, and then they can do whatever they want to you.

Thanks! Interesting. This was the final straw so I cancelled my donation during this debacle. I am certainly not conservative but i am a fierce feminist and there are many other charities I can give my money to

It reads like a student project. I would reject it if it came for peer review and not accept the quality if I'd commissioned it from an agency.

China is now using aid extensively to gain control in various countries, including a lot of African countries. Not the first, of course, but big just now.

From the report: “A 34-year-old may not have been born with social networks at their peak, but they have lived the Internet since childhood and …”

Maybe proofreading is also “phobic”.

How much money did this “Analysis” cost?

If you are interested generally in this the book Dead Aid by Moyo is good about aid as an industry. She claims most African countries have gone from 10% poverty in the 70s to 70-85% now partially due to aid which isn't helping. These big executives have an interest in being needed more than actually helping. Aid as imperialism by Hayter is another. Quite different ideologies (moyo is neoliberalism, hayter more neo Marxist) coming to similar conclusions about the likes of oxfam .

@SaffronSpice yes its that explicit the times did an article on it a year or so ago.

Only 16% of Oxfam's income comes from trading. Our finances and accountability | Oxfam International

If their income is significantly down, shops being closed is not really an adequate explanation.

Shop income is particularly important to charities though as it's unrestricted income; most grant givers aren't very keen on funding the running costs of an organisation. (To be clear I think running costs and admin are important things to fund, as long as they're actually spent on running the organisation and not pointless navel gazing, lecturing supporters for wrongthink, or campaigning for things which are unrelated to the organisation's charitable purpose)

If It is explicit then that is terrible. But it doesn’t need to be explicit. If you are relying on a regular hand out then it is pretty implicit that biting the hand that feeds you may have a negative impact on funding and ergo your job.

That would be because the Scottish government has a clause in all funding contracts that says that the charity must not contradict the Scottish government on anything publicly or they have to repay all the money they received, oh and you can't even apply unless you are trans inclusive

Various third sector Scottish organisations show the danger when you start to rely on government and corporate handouts. You are no longer independent and have to start parroting your funders line, you are unable to represent your supposed beneficiaries interests. And when special interest groups get involved in the funding cycle you set up an unhealthy echo chamber between funder and charity.

I also think that Oxfam - and other similar organisations - need to keep significant cash reserves. They are there to respond when a disaster happens and that can't be predicted. They need cash reserves to charter planes and get the stuff where it needs to be, hire local staff. You need cash in the bank for that, you can't launch an appeal and keep desperate people waiting while you fundraise from the public.

And yes - Oxfam shops (and other charity shops) were closed in Scotland March - July 2020, then again 3 weeks November-ish, then again 24th Dec 2020 to April 2021. And even when we were open, there were ALL sorts of rules about quarantining donations for 72 hours, limits on customer numbers and many people who had volunteered pre-pandemic didn't come back. Takings for 2020 and 2021 were massively affected, 2022 was back to more normal trading. And there were no large fundraising events like Glasto, or the London Marathon.

The sector as a whole is not feeling the pinch. Sales are up year on year, combination of cost of living and a general inclination to be more sustainable. Quantity of donations has not slowed - quality has declined.

Oxfam also has long ties with M&S and before I left we had dozens of boxes (40-50 probably) of internet returns and slight seconds from Zara as a corporate donation which flew off the shelves for good money. Plus there's all the payroll giving, corporate bequests, Glastonbury income. I wouldn't be surprised if there are people at Head Office who would happily do away with the stores altogether in favour of pivoting into a campaigning/lobbying organisation. The HO staff are certainly in no hurry to get their hands dirty at the sharp end of sorting bags and serving customers.