to think Camila Batmanghelidjh must be lying when she says she has done nothing wrong in her spending of Kid's Company Charity Funding?

[LuluJakey1]

She is like Jimmy Saville in that what she has been doing has been under all of all our noses and we have refused to speak up about it or believe it.

It is not just the luvvies who have been up close and personal with her- involved with the charity and CB at a very close level, some even Trustees. It is also the employees and the parents of children, the children themselves, the volunteers. We are not talking about a hidden mis-use of funding. We are talking aout a whole culture of open waste and self-indulgence.

I know it is from The Daily Mail but it is actually an interview with het.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3199527/My-heart-clear-says-Kids-Company-boss-Batmanghelidjh-admits-charity-paid-school-fees-employees-children-denies-wrongdoing.html

£5000 a month rent on an Art Deco House with private swimming pool - which houses a member of staff, and the swimming pool is used by CB but hot by any children- they are 'not allowed' (her words)

£40,000 chauffeur- now a specialist worker (according to CB). also has private school and therapist funding for his 2 children.

Staff( how many?) have their children sent to private schools because the job is stressful and it is part of a 'staff well-being package'

The Chauffeur's sister is also employed - now as a 'brilliant accountant', last summer as 'the woman who does my sewing' (mind you that would be a full-time job in itself, but it does imply the charity pays for those vile outfits much as I suspected)

25 young people given £769,000 a year funding - £31,000 a year each, to do nothing. They are CB's specially selected young people- many of whom have received funding for many years. She describes them as 'like a family, hanging round the house'. She deals with their funding herself.

Yet STILL CB complains staff should not have spoken up about any of this and implies those who have will suffer for it.

In my view this woman and her behaviours are corrupt, dishonest and immoral.

Are my views unreasonable? I feel this could be jus the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is yet to emerge and prosecutions will be very likely.

I think there should be a down- to the -bone, in-depth investigation of every aspect of the work of this charity and of CB. Not simply any concerns that have now been raised but a complete trawl of the spending, the practices and the behaviours of CB herself.

Pffft if it was really important she would have said it ages ago. Otherwise she is just complicit.

The two positions as saviour of children and conveyor of terrible news for her own ends are mutually exclusive.

Mother Teresa was no saint either but she fooled us all.

Frankly I find it wholly unreasonable, baffling even, that everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that her name is Batman...

/helpful

“I have very severe learning difficulties so I can’t use a computer and so I have to dictate everything,” she said.

This is just crazy. How the hell could she pass a degree and a masters? To pass a masters, you have to read academic work, you have to write essays, you have to research ... how do you have the ability to do that if your learning difficulties are so bad, you can't even use a computer?

If she truly needed this level of support, then I suspect it is not "severe learning difficulties" she has but, rather, functional illiteracy in the English language. This would make sense considering her first language may very well be Farsi and she didn't come to Britain until she was 13.

She's been here for about 40 years yet she speaks with a very affected "foreign" accent. Pull the other one it's got bells on it.

chilli many people speak with an accent throughout their entire lives. My grandparents came to the uk when they were about 8. neither had Russian accents but their siblings in their early teens had strong accents till their dying days. CBs accent may be one authentic thing about her. she does appear to have huge difficulty around accepting responsibility for her charity's crash and in accounting for the many millions of pounds it swallowed up. it is all very disturbing and hugely disappointing. i have to admit to being taken in by her for a long time.

If she knew something she should be taking it to the police and if they wouldn't respond shouting it from the rooftops to the press. Not sitting on it to use as leverage to get what she wants in a form of blackmail.

Anyway, if she did know too much, surely the people hushing it up would have a vested interest in continuing to fund KC so she kept her mouth shut? After all, she only started making these dark hints after KC started collapsing. And giving £3 million then withdrawing it doesn't sound like the actions of a plot to bring KC down. Surely if that was the aim the £3 million would never have been offered in the first place?

It also raises very difficult questions about why CB didn't mention these allegations until the funding was withdrawn. It would appear she was happy to keep her mouth shut about it while the money was still rolling in.

She's been here for about 40 years yet she speaks with a very affected "foreign" accent. Pull the other one it's got bells on it.

Unless you arrive in a country as a young child, say under 11, the chances are you will have an accent. My own son has been bilingual from birth (with an embargo on TV in any language other than English), but when he speaks English there is a slight accent. More so if he is stressed, or tired.

And I am no CB fan rushing to her defence. Ever since she arrived on TV screens and in print media I have struggled to see/hear the wonder other people say they see/hear. In print I could never get a strong sense of what she actually did. Which is fine once or twice, but when it is ALWAYS that way it can feel like you are being deliberately sold an armful of fog that is impossible to grasp and examine. On TV I always got a heavy whiff of something being "off" plus still failing to understand what she actually did.

I thought it was me having taken an odd dislike to some celebrity charity person for an inexplicable reason, given her raging popularity with everybody else. Unfortunately it would seem it wasn't just me being a cynical old bat after all.

Tbf accents can stay with somebody there is an elderly man in my village who is polish h e has been here for as long as i can remembef and he stil has his accent with a scottish twang so accents can be al over the place although she was starting to mimic kirsty wark in that interview a few pages back but she trained as an actress so probably able to pick accents up.

While I have no knowledge of the ins and outs of CB's qualifications, plenty of people with disabilities that impede reading and writing are academically successful.

No idea what the ins and outs of CB's qualifications are.

My neighbour isnt from here her toddler speaks English in her parents accent its so cute

I think it's good that steps are being taken to see how the charity spent the vast sums of public money it was given. Whatever the rights and wrongs it needs to be accountable.

As an aside I feel a bit uneasy seeing the way CB is portrayed in the media - often a picture of her in her carefully mismatched colourful clothing with a headline that has 'chaotic' in it. There must be other Kids Company pics that could be used. I don't like the way pics focus on CB's appearance. It is irrelevent.

But she's always dressed like that. It was her trademark and part of the reason she was so effective at fundraising is because she was so distinctive. And she has put herself front and centre of all KCs work in the good times, so of course in the bad times attention would fall on her too. And she's still wearing that sort of clothing, I am at a loss to see why pictures which show her in the way she chose to be portrayed shouldn't be used. She IS KC, of course pictures of her would be used in articles, and that's what she looks like. I haven't seen anything which comments directly on her appearance.

She was at a Swiss boarding school from age 9 and Sherborne public school in Dorset from age 12. So yes the accent is likely 'put on'.

Imo she is a con artist. If you read the various interviews with her over the years- there are plenty!- she tells a different story of her background in each one.

Eg she says she was an asylum seeker/refugee but she had a Belgian mother so would have had the right to reside here anyway.

She paints herself as anti-establishment but she is the establishment! Her grandfather was a multi millionaire. She said herself that she never walked on a pavement during her childhood as she was chauffeured everywhere. Her father went to fettes (Tony Blair's school) in the 1940s. He was a supporter of the shah in Iran before the Islamic revolution in 1979. Look up Iranian history- the shah was placed there by Britain to control the region's oil.

Then she went to one of the most exclusive public schools in the world- look up the alumni of Sherborne. I can't believe it's a coincidence that chris Martin of Coldplay who gave KC £8million also went there.

Also if you dig deeper you can see that her 'urban academy' in London used to be owned by Sherborne school before she bought it from them for KC!!

It stinks.

And that's before she went in front of the home affairs select committee (IDS included) and blamed young men's violence on their mothers!

Then there's KC's last annual report (2013). It's a joke. The only evidence given is from a survey of 750 clients, who dont even have very good outcomes.

That should have sparked a full audit if nothing else.

What she's done will harm the entire charity sector and therefore many other vulnerable people in need and imo that's unforgivable!

Her accent isn't consistent. If you listen to her it veers between English RP and her accent (os ot actually an Iranian accent because it soinds suspiciously jafaican to me)

I don't think her choice of clothing is irrelevant. She has adopted the dress style of West African women despite having no West African heritage (she's half Belgian, half Iranian) in an attempt to see more 'real' despite being from an extremely wealthy background. It is every bit as patronising and absurd as Tim Westwood's wannabe gangsta posturing.

She's now planning on opening a privately funded kids food bank and apparently fifty KC workers have already volunteered to staff it.

Astonishing.

Link:

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/kids-company-founder-camila-batmanghelidjh-set-to-open-childrens-food-bank-in-south-london-a2820831.html

Lightbulbon: "She said herself that she never walked on a pavement during her childhood as she was chauffeured everywhere."

And that's obviously a taste that never went away.

So 50 of her minionsstaff are volunteering probably means they want their kids school fees paid so are doing it

I think the foodbank idea when she admits she has never even turned on an oven is appalling. I take more notice of people in high up positions who are prepared to get down and dirty doing menial work and anyone who has self awareness would never ask someone to do something they wouldn't be prepared to do themselves.

I can't imagine CB standing under a railway arch in wind and rain to help starving children. As if. She is a charlatan and a manipulator.

But what has really got me about this is the fact she has 'favourites' and you never know whether you are in or out depending on her mood. I can't remember where I read this but it wasn't the Daily Fail, it was somewhere more reputable.

For vulnerable children to one day be a favourite of hers and then next minute she ignores you is vile. For that reason only I think she is a very unpleasant woman.

But she has sauntered into crack dens dotcha know . Her behaviour reminds me of something and I cant think of the words. Its all very grand gesture though

I think it's incredibly dodgy her name has been associated with that project. It was reported earlier this week that Hawksmoor was setting that project up:

www.peach-report.com/People/2984949/hawksmoor_supports_kidsco_children.html

But now it seems that she has co opted it for herself, even the link on that article which directs to the guardian has now changed and Hawksmoor aren't mentioned, it's all about her.

It stinks frankly.