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.

You could not make it up!

Alan Yentob is coming across as extremely foolish in all of this and his suitability to head up a national broadcasting company is increasingly under question I would say. His judgement is appalling.

Ridiculous use of language in his email.

After explaining the potential trauma for clients, the document then went on to list "risks posed to the public", saying there was a "high risk" of looting, rioting and arson attacks on government buildings. The same section also listed "increases" in knife and gun crime, neglect, starvation and modern-day slavery as possible dangers

Yes, take away CB's swimming pool, seamstress, chauffeur, private car, 7 PAs, nurse, £95,000 salary and I can well imagine she'll be looting, rioting and committing arson attacks on government buildings.

Public announcement to government buildings and agencies: Ensure your swimming pools are secure, your PAs, nurses, chauffeurs and seamstresses are safe, your huge government salaries are in a secure account and your government cars are alarmed. A monstrosity in colourful rags and a turban head dress is on the rampage and may fire-bomb you all because hers have been stopped. Easily recogniseable -described above and talks in psychobabble in a 'street' accent, can not walk far, write or use a key board. Likely to behave as if she rules the place. Could have turned savage. Talks utter shite

Forgive me if I doubt that starvation will be a 'possible danger' for CB.

LuluJakey do you have a personal investment in this?

No. I live in the north-east. Had never heard of her or KC until this all emerged. We are ignored by most things up here. I am just fed up of London luvvies and this government and their complete neglect of the north-east, their hacking of education budgets and their bloody obsession with testing, measuring students and accountability of teachers and then seeing someone get away with this knd of profligacy and deceit and the government throwing money at them. The money she has had from the government just since 1st April would fund our school for close on two years. I can imagine what their response would be if we had nothing to show for it except the Head having a swimmng pool, a private car , a chauffeur, a seamstress, 7 PAs and so on. It is shocking.

The more I read about it, the more I am just hacked off with it and with CB in particular and now with Alan Yentob who is looking like fool with awful judgement. All these people are coming out of the woodwork saying 'Oh we had suspicions. We knew it wasn't right' etc. It is just like what happened with Jimmy Saville - they all knew and did not speak up. Infact they enabled him and that is exactly what they have done with her- enabled her to build her myths and legends and lauded her for it.

She has been a fashionable cause for her own ends in my opinion- with the glitterati wanting to be attached to it because she is stand-out, weird, the cause is London, it is gangs and young mainly black youths (or so she intimated, actually it seems to be adults rather than children and very few of them). It had tag lines like damaged, rejected, crime, gangs, saving lives etc. It was 'street' . Except...it was none of those things. It was all about CB and has been a giant fraud and con- in my opinion.

The whole thing is like some sort of grotesque satire on the state of things in the way the country is being run. You could not make this up.

I wonder what will emerge next- details of a huge pay-off for CB, news that she will have a huge pension, confirmation of 90% of funding being spent on salaries of people to work with 10 actual children and 200 mothers, designer clothes being bought for the chauffeur's daughter and son. Nothing would surprise me, nothing. I still think there will be safeguarding issues that emerge.

I see CB on Celebrity Big Brother , holding court 'meanwhile in the garden Camila is telling Jordan and Zayn about nasty Mr Cameron and how she knows lots of secrets about child abuse in high places and that is why everyone turned against her. She is describing her terrible childhood, her sister's suicide and how she has always known she has a special gift and was put on earth to save poor children and be their spiritual mother'.

Just wait until the utter waste and profligacy of academy chains comes to light.They waste millions paying the academy chain staff a fortune by top slicing the budget of every school they take over. As a minimum they take 5% of the budget of ever school to pay for their own staff, not the school staff. They earn huge salaries and many are nutters- raking in money from public education funds. Disgarceful but the Tories love it. Many academy chain leaders are their friends - making a big living from money that should be being spent on children.

There is one near us and it employs and pays huge salaries to all the staff local authorities sacked because they were rubbish. The government is happy for them to run the most vulnerable schools now.

It is all the same stuff- get rid of state responsibilities and let anyone do the work. Give them the money,don't scrutinise them, let them make profits from the money which should be spent on children, the elderly etc. Typical Tory shite.

And only be bothered about anything that is in London or the south-east.

The role of Yentob in this is looking increasingly bizarre and concerning.

Lulu I think you are spot on that this whole affair is symptomatic of the way in which Tories have 'managed' the Academisation of state education. Although I also think that the Bliar-Brown-Balls Labour Government initiated a lot of the rot, e.g. unaffordable PFI schemes, Ruth Kelly trying to sound the death knell of community schools, etc.

Aren't we all personally invested in politics?

I yhink some people might have felt LuluJakey's comments strayed beyond criticising CB's actions and turned into an ad homiem attack using her weight as a stick to beat her with. I tbink that was a bit unwarranted as her actions in themselves are enough to condemn her without laying into her size or using terms like 'monstrosity' to describe her.

Compos, I know it's considered a personal attack to talk about people's weight and so on, but she has used her sizeable appearance to play something of a theatrical role here, so I think it's fair game. I come back to what I said earlier. If she was a reasonably normal size wearing a navy Marks and Spencer suit and trotting about getting the bus like the rest of us, there is NO WAY she would have garnered half the attention and resources she did. And some of that was our money, paying for her chauffeur and her outsize curtain frocks and the like.

i speak as someone who also has a weight problem, hormonal problems and also arthritis, probably a lot more disabled than she is, but who manages not to be morbidly obese through sheer effort. Nobody has to look like that, seriously.

I agree Boffin the line has been blurred by CB but a couple of posts amongst the largely pertinent points raised by lulu were getting close to name calling.

I personally feel that nothing about CB including her very pronounced visual rhetoric should be off limits for discussion, given that she repeatedly refers to her corporeal self and her 'natural' and created physical identity in her many, many interviews.

It's quite true that the turban, the outlandish clothes and the whole demeanour were carefully cultivated but "monstrosity" is going a bit far.

Unless you're referring to her ego.

Yes, I think it would be fair comment to discuss a monstrous ego or monstrous self-construct.

I find the image interesting. This is a photo from 1998, pre turban.

Whoops.

Well, this is interesting:

www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/27/party-donors-advisers-former-mps-peers-dissolution-honours

James Lupton has been made a peer. Yes, that's James Lupton, "a financier who has given £2.8m to the Conservative party and is its co-treasurer". You may remember him being mentioned upthread. As the article says: "Lupton was also an active supporter of, and donor to Kids Company, the charity that recently announced its closure."

Don't really know a huge amount about it but I must say, Lulu, that was a fabulous post!

Yes, that was a fab post from Lulu. Agree completely about the waste of money that is the academies programme.

Interesting pic from whatson. Didn't she say somewhere that she had always dressed the way she dresses now?

This must be upsetting for those who supported the charity.

I really appreciate this thread - it's incredibly informative for those who find this interesting and I do find it very interesting. I loved 'Hustle' on TV and this woman is without doubt guilty of the 'long con' - it's fascinating how she's gone about it, how and why people have fallen for it, how it's all coming apart. The thing is - nobody is ever as clever as they come to believe they are and I'm sure CB is still completely in denial. She's stitched us up like kippers and I expect she's probably outraged that her bubble is bursting. I think it's only going to get more interesting.

It was not a comment aimed at her weight but was about her appearance, her demeanour and the myths she has created- all of which she cultivates as part of the way she presents the whole persona of 'Camila', which I think is the monstrosity. She plays on people's emotions- she speaks using emotive language designed to provoke sympathy or she tries to baffle with pseudoscience. I think she is highly manipulative and personally greedy.

I find her offensive and distasteful to be honest- her manipulation of people for her own ends and the absolute blatancy of it all. All in the name of 'thousands of the most vulnerable young people' she helps, who it turns out are also part of the myth. It is deceitful, dishonest, and that the money has come from donations and the government makes it even more shameful. What fools have been made of them! And whilst many donors (who gave from compassion for young people) in need deserve our sympathy, the government, and the luvvies who gave to be part of the myth don't.

www.prweek.com/article/1361779/kids-company-founder-camila-batmanghelidjh-turns-6-hillgrove-rescue-reputation

Today's news, wonder if it's true? Pity Max Clifford is in jail- she could have gone to him.

Oh. So they're the people who defended Charles Saatchi by making public that Nigella Lawson had used cocaine. So - no need to reshape someone's reputation with facts and the rebuttal of misunderstandings - oh no! Just smear the other party! Perfect. You can see why this would appeal to Camila.

Lulu, liney ... oh, don't. There are something I cannot cope with thinking about, and state education policy is one of them.

A friend of mine works for a local council and was in charge of the "Building schools for the future" scheme during the 00s. She knew from the off there was never any money for it, but they still had to go through an entire rigmarole of pretending there was, complete with consultations, meetings and reams of paper. Endless hours and resources wasted on something that would never happen.

And I never understood why any teenage black lad from Southwark would spend time at a place like Kid's Company where the decor was like walking into a John Wayne Gacy painting. CB even had a table that looked to have rubber ducks all stuck to the under shelf. I mean, who does that? Who thinks ... I know, I will attract urban youth to my space by decorating it in tin foil stars, teddies and old fashioned children's spinning tops?

I mean, when you take it all together, the roundabout messgae you get from Camila and Alan is that the reason for the London riots was because young people didn't get enough access to coloured pens.