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 went to a tea at KC last year & CB said KC didn't have a PR budget & that made me think 'aha! Hence the dramatic statements & costume'. By being so colourful she made a big impression in photos & on TV. The attendees sat at tables randomly, one of the people I met was a volunteer mentor & very nice. Others ran outreach/community programmes for law firms etc. I think a lot of people must feel betrayed by the revelations of malpractice. The unspoken goal of the tea was for attendees to give money/toys for Christmas presents.

I think she does use her appearance as part of her mythologising, and brings her weight into it too. However I do agree it's not on to stoop to personal insults about her weight or attractiveness.

It's possible to observe and comment on the way she creates her persona, without being mocking about things she may not be able to help.

Sorry, it was low and childish of me to insult her appearance like that. I'll ask for it to be deleted.

It's always nice to see a post like that.

Another aspect to CB is the connection between her 'unusual' upbringing- being sent abroad aged 9 then to a 3rd country aged 13, which suggests quite a detached relationship with her parents to her desire to 'parent' KC kids.

Was she trying to recreate some mythical idea of the kind of parenting she never had?

She is very critical of mothers, for example.

Also there's her lack of ever having an adult relationship. This is odd in itself and would suggest to me that she has attachment issues.

Add this up and she is maybe not the most stable person to be dishing out parenting support to others.

Looking at it like that reminds me of Michael Jackson and his child world of neverland.

Anyone who's ever been in KC's HQ will know it looked like a nursery, not a professional office.

I think CB is quite a disturbed individual who has never comes to terms with her odd upbringing and has used her wealth and school connections to the establishment to create a make believe world where she is some kind of fairy godmother.

It's all just been one big myth.

Also there's her lack of ever having an adult relationship. This is odd in itself and would suggest to me that she has attachment issues.

or maybe she is asexual, which isn't remotely odd, and certainly doesn't indicate any attachment issues.

That is an ignorant thing to say

It is unusual though, charis.

The comparison with Michael Jackson is eerie, good spot. I want to see the trustees held accountable for supporting this fantasist. Sending money to deported criminals, giving money for rent to adults, it's shocking.

It is unusual though, charis

Its completely normal, if she is asexual

It's weird reading some old articles on her, like this. The one comment on there was a warning!

Asexuality isn't odd, but it is unusual, a quick google found the figure 1/100.

I think given we don't know she is asexual and given that it is relatively uncommon it is a fair comparison to Michael Jackson

Asexuality isn't odd, but it is unusual, a quick google found the figure 1/100.

so the percentage of asexual women is comparable to the percentage of women who are gay, no one calls them odd or unusual

What an interesting comment on that Independent article, MrsJamin - I wonder who that was? Very prescient.

No one is calling people who are asexual odd personally charis but saying the condition isn't a common one.

so the percentage of asexual women is comparable to the percentage of women who are gay, no one calls them odd or unusual

and certainly no one is claiming it has been caused by poor parenting or attachment disorder

In that article she is claiming nothing has been in place for children in poverty since Victorian times. This is absolutely untrue. The 1944 Education Act, the introduction of the Welfare State and the introduction of the NHS in 1948 meant pretty much all the structures were put in place to support children in poverty. We know they have had a positive outcome from indisputable statistics like mortality rates etc. That is not to say there won't be individual cases where there has been a failure of services to come together properly, but given the numbers that are coming out wrt how few children KC was directly helping, it is actually something of a testament to the welfare state etc that the numbers in difficulty are apparently so low.

Of course she could have chosen to work with the authorities to improve the reach of the welfare state, but that would be hard. It is much easier to have a celebrity whip-round and play the Madame Bountiful, dishing out dosh in brown envelopes to all and sundry without accountability. Low hanging fruit.

I note the comparisons with Rachel de Souza who is also less than impressive at working with local organisations to build solid social structures, instead going for the Hawthorne effect approach to education of changing the school uniform (what I see as a parental school attendance tax by another name, frankly), going around pupils' houses to get them up (like KC) and laying on expressive additional tutoring for chosen ones. All this is easy to engage in when you have a slush fund, but I doubt it will have a lasting effect on education in a wider sense. Improvements will be transitory and curtailed once the additional funding tap of head teacher play money is turned off.

I think she knows this, which is why she is frantically empire building to swallow up more schools in Norfolk, as we saw from recently published emails. She has been seeking to demean schools which are performing perfectly well. This is because she needs the 10% top slice and dowries of additional institutions to keep her ridiculous Ponzi scheme afloat. Meanwhile her trustees apparently do nothing as it suits them to claim credit for things directly attributable to temporarily enhanced funding.

Interesting reference to a study in that guardian article:

"Recent scientific research, to be published in September, will illustrate how intervention by Kids Company assists, on a neurological level, children whose brain functioning is damaged as a result of being chronically frightened all the time. "The frontal lobe rewires," Batmanghelidjh says, "but repair work is possible through assiduously reparenting the child. In other words, vulnerable adolescents need to be treated like toddlers in order for them to be able to recoup that developmental delay."

The results of the study suggest that, after 15 months with Kids Company, children do begin to show dramatic brain-functioning changes. Put another way, they heal."

The article is from March 2014 so the results should have been published about a year ago..I wonder who conducted the study and what the findings were...off to google...

I may rip apart Anthony Seldon's record in a similar manner later. I am just having a tea and seeing if I can be bothered.

Well obviously it doesn't work as w therapy or they wouldn't be supporting Nigerian blokes well into their 30s because those blokes would have been 'healed'.

Please don't forget to post about Anthony Seldon BoffinMum. Whenever I hear him talking I think "charlatan" but haven't gone beyond an instinctive dislike.

I hope your tea gives you the energy, BoffinMum. I find your posts extremely interesting and thought-provoking.

Oh god, Anthony Seldon! Yes, please, BoffinMum.

BoffinMum my DH is begging you to have a go at Anthony Seldon

He also wishes I would give up my KidsCo obsession but that's not happening any time soon

No pressure then.