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.

And, interestingly, she says she can write!

And read Lulu! Or "try" to read which in the article sounds much more like it was the subject matter that was difficult rather than any non existent form of dyslexia.

Such an interesting and well-informed thread.

That reads like self-parody.

Ok, that and the picture have made my mind up. Deluded fantasist woo-merchant with ego the size of the planet.

Yep she doesn't appear to be consistent with her accounts of her learning difficulties. Why spend three years frigging about on a drama degree if you have known all your life your vocation is working with children?
Also what are the odds that a baby born in the 1960s weighing a kilo surviving without any medical intervention? Very long indeed I'd guess.

It all seems to play into this self created myth that she was some sort of messianic figure put on the earth to save children and that it was her magic powers and her magic powers alone that could do this. The survival against the odds, 'feeding' 70 odd children in Iran who were drawn to her like a magnet, her claims that she planned out Kids Company aged 14 all appear to be part of her own myth making.

But fuck me ... that painting! It looks like one of those 'collectable' plates you get advertised in people's friend magazine.

Whats the symbolism of the decapitated horse?

So far Google hasn't come up with anything

There is a headless mule myth but it makes not much sense for me in this context.

She also finds an awful lot of kinds 'in the snow' 'In the street covered in blood' and so on. I lived and worked around there for years including spending time on some of the less salubrious estates, and frankly it didn't look like that to me. And I didn't need chauffeurs to protect me, either (I used to go up there in a red Nissan Micra). The five estates were a bit scary in terms of dodgy blokes hanging around on street corners, and there was the occasional late night drug related stabbing or shooting (frankly we even get that in Cambridge) but they were still recognisably parts of modern Britain (and they were regenerated in the 1990s, anyway).

I think the headless horse is going to represent the fall of the Shah or something.

I don't think it is a horse. I think it is a giraffe. I'm not really coming up with much for that either, though.

Re: not being able to use a keyboard- I actually believe that one. I did a degree in the 90s and hand wrote everything. There are plenty of people in their 50s who have no it/word processing skills whatsoever - ie they dont even know how to use a mouse on a screen.

As for not handwriting. Nowadays unis provide scribes for disabled students at lectures and in exams (my friend works as one). So you could get a degree without handwriting either. (Now) but I don't think support for disabled students was that good in the 80s when she matriculated.

And it's a good point what someone said up thread about why did she study drama if she was so dedicated to working with children?

It seems telling that she appears to have no qualified social workers at all amongst her staff.

Don't know if this has already been posted but it's where she blames black mothers for gang violence.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6080096.stm

I hadn't seen this article before.

The kids co kids get her clothes from skips!
She gives them clothes from fendi & mulberry for interviews!
Her weight fluctuates by 10kg overnight!

How did Kirsty Wark not see through her?

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/how-to-dress-with-authority-kirsty-wark-and-camila-batmanghelidjh-discuss-the-changing-role-of-fashion-in-womens-workwear-9802743.html

There are tape recorder claims for university, and this is realistic, I think. (Although only written assignments and exams would have been formally marked). But if she can't write. she presumably did O and A Levels, with summative final examinations, without writing?! Sherborne forked out for a scribe for everything? Can't believe that. The only time this would happen is if someone broke their arm just before the exams. If you couldn't read or write you were generally turfed out of public school in those days, and exam boards did not accept oral submissions for papers designed to be completed in written form (if I knew which board it was we probably have the past papers etc at work, and I could actually check).

Lulu - where does that book excerpt come from? It's unbelievable!

The Mother Theresa comparison is quite telling, though.

To be fair that was really just a fashion shoot. Dissecting her would have been inappropriate in that context.

Up thread somebody asked if CB was a qualified psychotherapist. Unfortunately there is no definitive way of knowing. (Please do campaign your mp for statutory regulation of therapists!). Psychotherapist is unfortunately not a protected title so even if she isn't qualified she isn't breaking the law. However to work in the NHS you would need to be part of a regulated body. Her options would be the UKCP members.psychotherapy.org.uk/register or ACP www.childpsychotherapy.org.uk/Find_A_Therapist?display_name=Bat. She is not registered with either.

There are plenty of people in their 50s who have no it/word processing skills whatsoever

Seriously? People with degrees in jobs paying ninety grand?

In that book extract she's fucking deluded.

I've got a vocation too. At the age of nine I used to spend my spare time designing schools on drawing boards, and drafting what I thought would be the ideal timetable for a school. However even then I knew full well I was arsing about for my own entertainment and if I wanted to do this, i would have to be trained professionally. I tried not to be a teacher/lecturer initially and trained as a singer instead. Eventually though I got reeled in. For the first year I thought I knew it all, and since then I have realised how enormous the field is, how knowledgable my colleagues are, how essential collaborative efforts are and how most of the problems ultimately have more to do with geo-politics than any localised problems. I think a lot of my colleagues would relate to this, presumably because we are not Messianic, have professional qualifications and registrations, and, let's face it, humility.

Even my most arrogant colleagues (and there are more than a few monster egos in universities) would hesitate to express themselves in the terms she has done.

I'll be in my 50s in about hale a year and I don't know a single person in my age group who doesn't know how to use a computer.

Well.... I'm older than that and I have WP and IT skills and of all my older work colleagues and friends, I don't know anyone who doesn't have at least the basic skills and some are really quite techy. To be frank you can't even pay a bill nowadays unless you can be online.

Snap Ignaecoccus! My BF's Mum is 78 and she does all her banking online, pays her bills, googles stuff, sends emails. I think probably 10-15 years ago there was a lot of people who had trouble but adult learning classes for IT sorted that and most people realise they have to embrace it.

My DD was asking me last night how to change the time settings on Windows10 as I installed it a few weeks ago and I am old. I was flattered actually as it's usually the other way round and me asking her!

I know quite a few over-80s who can't hack computers, but no one younger than that. I suppose CB does come from an era and background where it would be the norm to have someone else to do all one's secretarial and admin work...

We are the generation who saw them turn from little more than typewriters into what they are today. I remember doing schoolwork on a friend's Commodore 64 and printing it out on those printers with rollers on the side and you had to tear the side strips off.

I read down on your wiki link about the headless mule and this paragraph appears under the anthropological explanation section:

The absence of a head may be a metaphor for the lack of reason, or evidence that the curse involved the perdition of the soul. In either case, without the head to give direction, the body is left under the power of violent passions, immediate impulses and selfish desires.

There's something there...

A daisywheel printer, igneo.