Woman's Hour today on Camila Batmanghelidjh

[PursuingProxemicExactitude]

I honestly have no words.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sjxy

Relentless hostility and suspicion. Not one single positive word in half an hour. So tired of this. Woman's Hour is a travesty of itself now.

(I glimpsed another thread but can't find it.)

@Pimlicojo

I didn't hear it, but shall listen to it. I think the fact that CB has not been held accountable for her actions is a travesty. A total failure of justice, possibly because of the high profile figures who offered public support. And public money.

She's been fully held accountable. She's been subject to very detailed legal examination, and has been found to have accounted satisfactorily for all that she did.

I'll admit to a bias, because at the relevant time I worked somewhere where my colleagues regularly worked with Kids Company jointly to help countless desperate people. No-one else was doing that sort of work with anything approaching the degree of success they did. Sure, it wasn't perfect, there were certainly things that should have been run better, but it's wrong to lose sight of the good she did.

Why have they done this to Womans hour

I wonder... 🤔

It was an interesting interview I must say

I used to love WH. I never listen now.

God, I miss Jenni and Jane. They were so comfortable, relaxed, knowledgeable and dignified. They let their guests speak, pushing for answers respectfully until they got them. And they always got them. And they brought such familiar humour and joy to it, whatever they were talking about. I’ve barely listened since the overhaul and I was dog loyal to the show.

I don’t know much about EB except that someone told me she opposed women rabbis.

I thought she was a convicted felon and fraudster and am amazed the BBC gave her airtime

Well you thought wrong. She was completely exonerated following lengthy investigation and not only was not convicted, but was praised by the judge for the "enormous dedication she showed to vulnerable young people over many years"

I think Emma is rude, hostile and particularly to Zara Mohammad, Islamaphobic. Emma disguises her technique as hard hitting journalism but scratch beneath the surface and you'll find an intolerant bigot.

@2Rebecca

I thought she was a convicted felon and fraudster and am amazed the BBC gave her airtime

Sorry - what???

Who?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Barnett

I'm aware of her background, Caramelwhispers - and heard parts of both those interviews. I still felt the bile rising in my throat at today's blatantly unbalanced attempt at 'hard hitting journalism'.

Kids Company must have encountered and influenced the lives of hundreds of people. But the only one EB chose to quote conveniently said something that cast the interviewee in a bad light.

And she seemed so outraged that a company doing public work should have received funding to carry out that work. Why was she so determined to throw mud?

@Nith - it should have been run better? It went bust!!!!

I used to follow her on Twitter.

She has now turned off replies except from people named in her tweet or people she follows.

So very limited in whose views she wants to hear

@2Rebecca

I thought she was a convicted felon and fraudster and am amazed the BBC gave her airtime

this is libellous. you need to withdraw.

The work CB was doing didn't fit with Cameron's agenda and so Kid's Company was starved of funding and CB was shafted. Get your facts straight. I'm sure the judge had access to plenty of relevant evidence, hence the judgment.

@Tankflybosswalkjam

Actually I think it’s more than fair enough. CB is a massive liability. How on Earth she avoided prison is beyond me. At best her actions have been negligent. But then if there had been proper governance it wouldn’t have happened. Sadly she railroaded over that.

This.

@baroqueandblue that’s simply nonsense. There was MASSIVE financial mismanagement, terrible governance and the trustees dropped like flies because they knew no one could get through to CB. She had powerful allies who injected cash which was never properly assigned to the projects that the trustees had signed off on. There was almost no oversight on outcomes or return on investment, just cash POURING through. I have no doubt that many families benefitted from the charity’s work, but when I see what a properly managed third sector organisation can do, with a fraction of the funding, it fills me with rage at the profligate waste.

To say that they were starved of funding is laughable.

Oh yeah, and they went bust. Did I mention that? It’s quite important.

They didn’t fold due to a lack of funding, or lack of need, or minimal outcomes on investment, they folded because they went bankrupt. And that’s almost unheard of in that sector, especially at that size because of proper leadership and governance, which she fucked up on a colossal scale, and then carried on without being pulled into line until it was simply unsalvageable. I am no fan of David Cameron but god knows this is one thing that absolutely can’t be pinned on him.

I really miss Jenni Murray (!).

I didn't hear this episode, but had read similar criticism online of the revamped WH, nothing positive.
I was absolutely gobsmacked that the R4 feedback program a couple of weeks ago was a flood of positivity and praise for the new presenting team, not the slightest criticism.
The questioning on new WH is frequently aggressive; I think there was room for a it to be a bit more robust, but they do need to remember that it isn't the Today program, and nearly everything degenerates into a phone in, the equivalent of local radio. It's dire, I rarely listen.

I've just listened to this interview. CB has a massive ego. She is deluded in her reasoning about the care of these children. For example the word got around the kids that the charity would give them cash etc so many of them fit their narrative to get the £.
She wanted to play the bountiful queen. Adoration and status was important to her.
I don't think Emma did anything wrong. Her interview was fair.
IMO this thread is led by CB's promoters. Or possibly CB is here herself.

@MegMogandOg

I used to love WH. I never listen now.

Same.

I miss Jane G who was a really excellent presenter and always made me laugh, but Emma is so much better than simpering Jenni Murray. I never used to listen to the days she was on.

I agree that EB is disappointingly aggressive.

I took away absolutely nothing from the interview. By being so aggressive it kept everything at a Daily mail level of inquiry. When in reality the truth will like somewhere in the middle. I think Kids Club probably did a lot of good and needed to be radical since many children are in radically bad situations. But, I also believe that there was clear financial mismanagement which let the kids down as much as anyone. I think the interview could have been far more balanced

@Pimlicojo

I didn't hear it, but shall listen to it. I think the fact that CB has not been held accountable for her actions is a travesty. A total failure of justice, possibly because of the high profile figures who offered public support. And public money.

So you know better than a high court judge who exonerated CB after a 10 week trial?

There is another story to be told here which EB failed to explore about how how CB challenged the government's record on its provision of supposed state "care" for vulnerable children and was discredited , smeared and briefed against by Dominic Cummings among others for doing so.

If you study the statistics, there are all sorts of things wrong with the current social care system for children , in fact the outgoing children's commissioner delivered a damning speech about it only this week saying it is failing thousands of children who are falling through the gaps, falling under the influence of criminals etc, and that the entire system is in need of urgent reform and increased funding. She describes the care system as being "on the edge of a precipice". CB had the balls to be vocal about it and was punished.