Did the captain Tom foundation charity really use the money to build their own spa pool??

[Terryer]

Just reading the paper this morning and see the family of Captain Tom have been ordered to pull down a building in their garden with a spa pool. I think it's a planning issue but the inference is that they used the money raised to build it. Did they really?

I notice that the article doesn't state that, it just invites the reader to draw that conclusion. My thoughts are that the family seem pretty wealthy, and with the passing of Capt Tom there would have been an inheritance.

I don't know what your voting options are but we only know what the papers tell us that the charity commission rarely investigates and does so in the face of evidence of grave misconduct.

There's also an article a year old saying the daughter tried to award herself a £100k salary and then got £60k for a 3 day a week role before being replaced with an experienced fundraising and charity worker.

I think its incredibly crooked if true and drags her father's good name into the mud.

I felt sad thinking how Captain Tom really inspired some people I know and he was seen as a hero. How awful to use that name by registration of him as a "brand" then use it for self enrichment rather than what he actually stood for.

They certainly used the charity's name on part of the application.

Sounds like there should be a criminal investigation

The whole thing was a grift.

The way I read it is they used the reason of needing an office for the foundation to get by planning permission and built a spa. But with their own money, the issue is misuse of the foundations name to obtain planning permission then building something else.

She's been ordered to tear down the spa, and the Charity Commission are investigating the whole thing. Donations are not being taken any more.

https://news.sky.com/story/captain-tom-foundation-stops-taking-donations-amid-investigation-12915032

This.

They used the foundation's name on the application and the charity weren't aware of it.

From day 1 they were clearly in it for the money and publicity and they did pretty well out of it with high wages from the charity, a special lockdown holiday to Barbados and I imagine a lot more.

It was a grift which was perfect - so perfect - an anxious public, the NHS, WW2.

didn’t his family suggest the laps thing?

read that somewhere, there is a suggestion I think that they exploited him a bit

Captain Sir Tom Moore's daughter ordered to demolish home spa www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-66100178

The article is carefully worded but yes, that's what they're inferring.

I wonder what conclusion the Charities Commission will come to.

it was evident from the start, no? Tom wasn’t organising all of that media but was a useful money maker for the family. Remember the children also wrote some sort of book? Didn’t she run a recruitment company? Hmmm.

While the original bit of raising money for the NHS was lovely, the whole circus that followed was a festival of exploitation masterminded by the daughter in PR and was hyped up on mawkisk jingoistic sentiment. It was obvious what was happening. But at the time if you said that on here you would be well and truly rounded on by the ignorant.

To be fair, we don't know if Tom was in on it. Just because he was old doesn't mean he was some kind of a vulnerable idiot. He may have seen the potential for £££ for his family too.

I can’t help thinking if everything they’ve done is above board, how terrible and brutal for the family to read this stuff about themselves and be put under the spotlight.

These days I never know what to believe in our press.

There was Captain Tom gin, Captain Tom baseball caps, that god awful cringe song with Michael Ball... Anything that could be monetised.

Where’s the AIBU.

The charity have stated that they have no knowledge of this building. In the planning application it was stated it was for the charity. How can that be above board?

The fact that so many people bought into the mad idea that any part of the NHS relied on an old man raising funds by walking a trolley around his garden is a sad indictment of the state of the national psyche

As with anything you read in the press, take it with a massive pinch of salt and wait to see what the Charities Commission concludes instead.

The whole thing is a sham, the family run a PR company and made the whole thing seem like a story that got picked up by press outlets in a viral type way but was actually deliberately press releases in a very organised & considered strategy.

I’ve also never understood the need for the ‘foundation’ when the money raised was supposedly for the NHS? If it was all legit surely funnel any further donations directly to the NHS?

I thought I had heard there was going to be an investigation about how the funds were used from the charity as there was some kind of conflict of interest between their other business and lack of governance.

But that was ages ago so not sure what's taking so long.

The whole thing always seemed a bit 'off' but that would have been an extremely unpopular view at the time.

I think lots of people thought it privately. My family did