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.

The thing is, the KC closure has happened now. And so the fallout has to be dealt with in the confines of the welfare state as it stands at the moment. And that is a welfare state which largely operates via cash paid to parents. And we know that some parents, when presented with a choice between spending money on something for themselves or food for a child will take the option of forgoing food for the child.

Of course there are arguments that this situation has been created by parents who have become so dependent on KC that they believe it’s not their responsibility to feed their children, or that the children shouldn’t be in the care of those parents at all, or that these parents should be getting food stamps instead of money. But they are not things that are going to change overnight, and given that this is happening right now and there probably are going to be some children left high because they’ve lost a source of income I do think that providing this food is a good thing.
Hawksmoor’s initial tweet made it very clear that this was a venture which left very little room for any sort of skulduggery. There was to be no spending apart from on food from two specific suppliers at cost price. Voluteer staffed, no wage bill, no admin, just food.

The fact that CB has now hitched her bandwagon to this alongside claims she is opening ‘a new office’ and ‘fundraising’ makes me think that she is now trying to drag that initial premise out to the realms of an office with staff and admin where money can more easily fall into black holes. Which just makes me more and more suspicious of her motivation.
I sincerely hope Hawksmoor have the sense to tell her to back off.

Boffinmum - I live in a country, France, with a bigger state-supported safety net (albeit for those who have contributed) and a much smaller charity sector than England. It's not all roses .

There's a trope that you can't solve poverty by throwing money at it.

(For those who like a laugh and some surprisingly perceptive analysis, you could do a lot worse than read P.J. O'Rourkes "Parliament of Whores" heading "Poverty Policy (how to endow privation)"). It makes some valid points.

p.s. just remembered a Henning Wehn gag about German charity.

"In Germany, we don't have much charity. But then we pay our taxes".

Well, Germany has a benefit system that is mostly contribution-based so you better pay your taxes/NI-equivalent or your benefits will be very meagre.
I like Henning but I disagree that there is little charity in D, there is a lot going on local level.

I've always thought it was a posh woman's pet project/hobby and it should have stayed that way or she should have remaned a figure head who gets friends to donate and stayed out of the money management. A decent registered charity has accountability and a duty to those who donate re. funds and how they are spent. It sounds like she carried on treating it as her personal 'thing' not a charity that needs firm financial structure, marketing and management.

I am full of opinions on this but less good on practical suggestions as I can't point to a single country that I think has it completely nailed, although Germany probably gets reasonably close.

The reality is that we need to reinvent a system that does not assume people are either in permanent jobs or unemployed, but accommodates transient work much better. We need to build much more appropriate family housing, with well-designed flats that also work well for older couples. Land needs to be released to a greater number of people than the current five major building firms, and planning regulations need to address build quality much better so we stop counting bedrooms and start looking at square metres of usable living space as a proper measure of what people are paying for. We need to accept that older people live longer but get more frail, and need professional care that is beyond many families (which are also smaller these days). And we need to face up to issues like mental health and dementia and not pretend these can be swept under the carpet any longer. Finally we need to consider decriminalising some drugs to kill off illegal trade, whilst training and supporting families badly affected by drugs and unemployment to be much more resilient, although there may well be significantly fewer with intractable problems once better housing, mental health support and flexible income supplements are developed.

I am starting to sound like Michael Gove at his most naive now so I will hand over to you lot for hopefully something more grounded

I think part of what Germany has right is that housing is cheap enough and salaries are high enough for families to survive on one wage, which means single parent families face less insurmountable problems.

DH has a friend from Uni who is a journalist on one of the big broadsheets. He says it is the calm before the storm- that they are all piling up stuff until the investigation publishes its findings and then it will all be published. He said they have loads of stuff but would not tell us what!

Lulu, that sounds likely. It's clear to me that things like the absence of Ofsted inspection of settings, and running an unregistered independent school, were allowed to happen when they shouldn't have. Add to that what appear to be quite staggering financial irregularities, the apparent inability of the charity to field functional adults who have developed independent and successful lives as a consequence of using the service, and CB's own inability to sustain a reliable narrative about her own past, and we have the potential for significant revelations, I am sure. As an editor I would certainly be sending people off to delve. There is huge public interest here too.

I am mindful of the fact that there are apparent similarities with some inappropriate practices in academy chains and potentially free schools as well. We will see.

I am thinking of some of the more apparently slippery practices of the Inspiration Trust, for example.

BoffinMum

I seriously hope you haven't got any political aspirations. You can be elected. You can be right. Just not at the same time.

(Vaguely reminds me of the project management choice. "Works. Within budget. On time. Pick any two" ...

"Right. Popular. Elected. Pick any two .....")

the apparent inability of the charity to field functional adults who have developed independent and successful lives as a consequence of using the service

The attempt they've made to produce success stories raises more questions than it answers:

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/15/without-it-i-would-have-given-up-three-women-on-how-kids-company-helped-them

was mother theressa not a good person then

im shocked that she may not be

The elephant in the room there is that they appeared to have started to access support as adults!

So perhaps it should be called Adults Company. Except that would sound like an escort agency.

Lurking, why do you think I do this job and I have shied away from politics?

Mother Theresa is massively controversial for similar reasons to Camila.

Just off the top of my head:

Took large donations from fraudsters (and likely knew the money was stolen) and refused to give it back
Much time hanging out with and complimenting dictators who tortured their people
Baptising people at death who weren't able to consent
Not sending patients to hospital whose lives could be saved
Getting massive donations but not spending them on say, improving access to analgesia or improving healthcare, then brushing off these criticisms by saying 'we weren't that sort of organisation'.

Basically patronising poor people, giving them a substandard service (her own end of life care was not in her own hospital but an all singing all dancing US facility) and then hobnobbing with the great and good to receive awards for herself.

Google 'The Missionary Position' by Peter Hitchens.

One of the biggest issues for patients dying of cancer in India is lack of access to strong analgesia. A woman in her position would have had massive influence to change this. Instead she picked up awards and criticised rape victims who had abortions.

omg i had no idea Wolpertinger

i will take a look

many thanks

In comparison look at Cicely Saunders, widely acknowledged as the founder of modern palliative care. While she had her own issues with founder's syndrome as St Christopher's Hospice grew (finances weren't her strong point either), at the end of her life she died there knowing she had created a world class facility anybody would be happy to use.

Mother Theresa's facility in contrast seems to be good enough for the poor people but not good enough for her.

I don't believe CB has a 'life-threatening' condition. I think it is another myth she has created. She may have some endocrine problem - although I don't think one exists that causes obesity on that scale. It may affect her weight to some extent. But it isn't life- threatening.
I would bet a year's salary it is another example of her creating a myth designed to put people off asking questions and to create publc sympathy and admiration. 'Isn't she amazing the way she gets on and does all this fantastic stuff when she has a life-threatening endocrine problem'. no she isn't amazing

I don't think so too Lulu. It's a long time since I did endocrine and I am by no means an expert but although there are conditions that make you more prone to gain weight, you get treated and that more or less controls it. I'm not denying it might be really miserable having it and that you might have to watch what you eat to stop you gaining weight but I really can't think of one that would cause obesity on that scale. It's a nice excuse for eating too many pies and creates more drama with her at the centre of course.

My stepdaughter went to volunteer with Mother T briefly but was similarly unimpressed, I think.

Mother Teresa had a whole belief that suffering made you more holy and closer to God. As a result her 'hospitals' didn't really have much emphasis on alleviating suffering or even saving lives. Essentially in a lot of ways her hospitals were dying rooms which simply prolonged suffering by taking care of basic needs like food and shelter without actually providing any sort of health care.

I think the secret baptisms thing was discredited though. That is a fairly standard slur against minority religions through the ages and often rears it's head.