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.

I was going to let the over-50s comment pass, but I agree with Irene, Igneococcus etc. I am a year older than CB, and I've been using computers for the past 30 years. I don't know anyone in my age bracket who can't use a computer. I also know plenty of people 15 or 20 years older than I am who are competent computer users.

Well she did have 7 PAs to do all this for her.

A daisywheel printer, igneo

More likely dot matrix, if we're talking the C64 end of the market. Daisy wheel printers were rather expensive.

Daily computer use by age group comparing 2006 and 2014

www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_373584.pdf

From that fashion article with CB and Kirsty Wark:

I have to wear clip-on earrings because disturbed children will pull on them.

Would you really refer to your clients as disturbed children in CB's position? It seems, I don't know, a bit offensive to label them in that way, dismissive even.

I can believe that she does not use a computer on a regular basis and does very little written communication.

What regular everyday 50 somethings do or don't do on a computer isn't relevant - CB isn't a regular 50 year old. Likewise, most 50 year olds will know how to use public transport or have the wherewithal to drive themselves to the places they need to go.

However she has lived an extraordinarily privileged life and has an army of PAs and a driver to do anything remotely trying. So if you have no pressing need to know how to do these things if you aren't interested.

Igne - yes, me too! I remember doing that in 1995 for my secondary school homework. I had to do my homework on a friends parents Commodore 64 and their printer with bits on the side you had to tear off.

I love the bit in this where she says she need to be chauffeur driven around south London for her own safety!!

www2.warwick.ac.uk/alumni/ouralumni/notable2/batmanghelidjh/

What does she think the local social workers do??

She lives on another planet.

But Warwick Uni seem happy to rave about her!

I've noticed that the photo with this article seems to be the only one of her with a child. Hmm

Also is there a reason why she spells her name differently (the h at the end) from her father?

More allegations of inappropriate spending:

twitter.com/thesun/status/635355040539148288

twitter.com/mwilliamsthomas/status/635367397667532800

Lightbulbon...interesting observation, one I had not spotted, but Camila, isn't the usual spelling either is it?

Camila is a commonly found, non-British variant of Camilla.

Has anyone looked her up on Companies House? Makes for very interesting reading.

So I've been looking at the reviews of her books on Amazon - all five-star and uncritically admiring save one for "Mind the Child", which I found interesting

This is a very strange little book; apart from adding to the Penguin Underground series, and giving some income to Keeping Kids Company Ltd. (actual name of the charity, and the company), making a case for keeping open the old fashioned ‘mental asylum’ (page 122-23) I cannot quite see its purpose.

It contains some odd statistics - claiming that the 2011 riots in Britain cost the country £200 billion (page 28); and that the average of those entering prostitution is 12 years (giving an online source which does not support this figure, page 9) amongst other spurious figures. Quite a few online sources cite the average age of 12, and give credit to the 2004 Home Office consultation paper 'Paying the Price' - it says no such thing.

Then we go on to find some unusual citations of the literature on child development and neural plasticity familiar to me from working over 25 years inside psychology and neuropsychology. No one in the 1980s when I studied under one of the authors that she cites, did anyone adhere to the 'maturation theory' of human development, which she claims on page 60-61. There are, however, lots of debates on the long-term effects of childhood stress, maltreatment and abuse. Purely on basic ethical grounds we should take care of children and keep them from harm: we don't need neuroscience to support this. There is no evidence for 'bodily memory' for trauma -- or repressed memories. And very little evidence to support ideas of Attachment Theory bound up purely in the quality of the first relationship. Konner (2010) clearly shows that cultures raise their children in diverse ways, including children being raised by their just older siblings, without suffering permanent damage.

The 'personal accounts' are very clearly the recollections of now apparently successful adults (that's reassuring) but belong to the school of misery literature.

Yes, it is awful, and yes some children have been left with ‘parents’ and in ‘families’ not worthy of the name, but we are left asking quite what ‘therapy’ has done for the young people with the biographies, and cases, in the book. Keeping Kids Company might have done more by aiding the statutory authorities to fulfil their roles, rather than offering art therapy and Rekii to these children: from this little book we don’t know.

She claims that she can't use a keyboard? Surely she means that she hasn't needed to learn, as she has people to do that for her.

From what I've heard she point blank refused to work with local statutory agencies.

Of course she doesn't need to type- why bother yourself with the mundane tasks everyone else working with kids has to do when she can cipher off funding for those kids into providing skivvys on £40k a pop to do her drudge work for her whilst she's wining and dining the rich, powerful and famous.

that BBC article above

That book review pretty much says what I was trying to say about Bowlby (attachment theory) conflated with neuroscience, but more intelligently I think.

Do you know what? I want to see CB up in front of a Select Committee answering some hard questions. I think we've had enough of trial by Daily Mail and it's time to move onto real public accountability here.

First question, Patricia Hodge,

"So can you write, Ms B?"
"I have very bad dyslexia"
"A lot of people with dyslexia can write perfectly adequately, Ms CB. Can you write?
"I have trouble writing"
"But you have O Levels, A Levels, an undergraduate degree, a postgraduate degree and a psychotherapy qualification, is that correct?
"Yes"
"But you got those whilst having trouble with writing, yes?"
"I used a tape recorder"
"How would that work in practice, Ms B? For example in terms of sitting your A Level examinations? Talk us through the arrangements at school for examinations."
"I promise you I used a tape recorder"
"Which Board's examinations did you sit, Ms B?"
"I can't remember"
"Which subjects?"
"I can't remember"
"You can't remember. What arrangements were there at university for examinations?"
"I used a tape recorder"
"What, for everything? That must involved an enormous number of cassette tapes. How did you store them?"
"I am not sure what you mean"
"Well, say you received 8 hours of face to face teaching a week, and recorded all of that, and then recorded notes relating to all your university reading, and then your assignments as well, we might be talking about 20 cassette tapes a week multiplied by 30 weeks a year, so 600, and 1800 over your undergraduate course, and then if we add the postgraduate courses, perhaps something like 3600 cassette tapes. That's quite an archive, Ms B. Do you still have the cassette tapes?"
"I don't understand your question"
"It's a simple question. You must have accumulated 3600 cassette tapes or thereabouts during the course of your studies. Where are they now?"

I could go on.

Second question, Patricia Hodge.

"So let's go through the data relating to the children you supported, Ms B. How many children did you offer support to each year?"
"We reached 36,000"
"So 36,000 different children turned up at at least one of your centres each year?"
"Not exactly"
"What did happen then?"
"We reached 36,000 clients. We define client as any adult, family member, classmate teacher or other professional that has been in contact with one of the children we support"
"So many of those people might not be children?"
"Yes"
"And many of them might not even be aware that a child they know had been supported by Kids Company?"
"Yes. but there would be a positive impact because of the work we had done with the child"
"But just to be quite clear, many of the people you define as clients may be completely unaware they were regarded as such by your organisation?"
"Yes"
"So how many of your clients were both children and aware you were helping them"
"I am not sure of the exact figures but our charity did not work like that"
"It's a simple question, Ms B. How many children was your charity helping directly?"
"I am not sure of the exact figures"

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.

Thanks to all the who have pondered this. There's a history of artists sneaking sumbols into paintings. I'd love to know if this is one example

I want you on that Select Committee BoffinMum !

Perhaps one of us could try to contact the artist and ask him about the symbolism in the portrait. Is he on Twitter? (I'm not)

Disappointingly I don't think the portrait artist, or it's commisioners at the National Portrait Gallery were in any way on to her. Although it now looks beyond parody, at the time she was very highly esteemed and the painting was thought to be aspirational:

www.npg.org.uk/about/press/camila-batmanghelidjh.php

When you visited the NPG it always had a big admiring crowd around it. The picture and sitter were seen in a much less critical light. Reading about the artist, he's more interested in realism than political or symbolic statements.

I do think it's a fabulously beautiful painting, the colours and textures, aside from the issue of the sitter's high self-regard IYSWIM.

The horse looks hollow so I wondered if it was a Trojan horse (/giraffe)

The book extract was from one of her books on Amazon. You can 'see inside' and I just screen-shotted the first couple of paragraphs of a chapter.