Selling The Big Issues The Brits Won't Sell.

Apparently one third of Big Issue sellers are from Romania originally. Near where I work, one of those Romanian vendors got into a fight this week with someone collecting money for teenage cancer who had "stolen" her patch. This same woman has been selling the Big Issue for at least three years and tells people in the shops nearby that she makes about £40.00 a day- not bad for untaxed income for doing fuck all. Oh and she also begs aggressively and sometimes has a shit behind the shops.

All in all a charming woman. It does raise the question about why the Big Issue- which is supposed to be helping homeless people get by- is effectively enabling beggars coming over to this country to ply their wares. It makes a mockery of the idea of charity.

Quote Of The Day/Year/Century

Why don't people take the identity politics brigade seriously?

So what message does Movember convey to those whose moustaches are more-or-less permanent features? With large numbers of minority-ethnic men—for instance Kurds, Indians, Mexicans—sporting moustaches as a cultural or religious signifier, Movember reinforces the “othering” of “foreigners” by the generally clean-shaven, white majority. Imagine a charity event that required its participants to wear dreadlocks or a sari for one month to raise funds—it would rightly be seen as unforgivably racist. What is the difference here?

You really have to read the whole article to get the full effect of the article.

Quote Of The Day

I had wondered why guardianistas and assorted poverty pimps complained so vocally about the benefit cap- this government's best policy so far- considering that by definition it won't affect anyone who isn't already well provided for.

I think Julia explains it here:

Yes, this is all about the effect on low-income families of the benefit cap, which numerous charities and pressure groups fear will remove their client base from comfortable walking distance from their cosy London offices…

It would be  unthinkable to have to commute all the way to Luton when doing one's bit to help the (high income) poor.

Won't Someone Please Think Of The Children?

Or the nonces will get them:

A "disturbing gap" in the Government's proposed changes to the vetting scheme would give paedophiles "a golden opportunity of targeting innocent victims", the NSPCC has warned.


The reforms, announced earlier this month, were part of Government attempts to end a "13-year assault on hard-won British freedoms" and would see only those working most closely with children or vulnerable adults having to undergo a criminal records check, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said.
But the NSPCC said a loophole in the proposed legislation would give sex offenders access to children.
Under the proposals, a teacher who has been barred but not prosecuted for inappropriate behaviour could become an unpaid, supervised, voluntary worker in a school without any checks revealing the previous behaviour that led to them being barred, the leading children's charity said.

Best we suspect everyone just to be on the safe side.

Remarkable Letter Of The Day

The head of War Child seems to understand the importance of not becoming an adjunct to a political party, perhaps this letter should be posted on the wall of every 'charity' that doesn't understand the where the line is drawn with respect to political campaigning:

I am surprised that former employees of aid agencies are willing to use the good names of their former employers for political purposes during an election campaign ('Cameron aid policy about populism, not poverty, say former charity bosses', News). Every major aid agency prizes its impartiality. We don't shy away from criticising any party policy when we think it is wrong and welcoming it when we think it is right.

Organisations such as mine are funded by the public. This money is not given to us for political purposes. When former employees of respected aid agencies use the reputations of their previous employers for political campaigning it has negative implications for all non-governmental organisations working to address poverty in a way that is impartial.

Mark Waddington

CEO War Child

Indeed. Whilst there may be an argument for public funding for charities and NGOs, not one that I'd agree with, there is no argument for funding partisan political campaigns.

Better Not Be Paying For This.

My local MP has had a complaint made against him to the police for raising the issue of whether to ban the burqa*:

An MP was investigated by police for inciting racial hatred over controversial comments about the burkha following complaints from a human rights association.
........

Now it has emerged police received a complaint about the Kettering MP a few days after his comments from the Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council (NREC).

So does anyone know who the NREC are? They appear to be registered as a company rather than a charity and were formerly the Northamptonshire Racial Equality Council, as I cannot find any reference to them on the Charity Commission website. However they have a bunch of local councillors on their committee and a name that implies Quangodom or Fake-Charityness.

Basically I want to know whether they are receiving public money, because their behaviour is not something I wish to subsidise. So if anyone knows how to go about finding out then please leave a comment.

* As I have said before I don't approve of banning items of clothing like the burqa.

Update: Mark Wadsworth points to their accounts which do indeed reveal that NREC is in receipt of lots of money from various local authorities in Northamptonshire. As Julia says it should make it easy for them to work out where they can find cuts.

Is This A Repeat?

After the myth of widespread sexual trafficking of women had been debunked last month there was always going to be a fresh moral panic:

Sophisticated networks of older men may be grooming hundreds of British children to be trafficked within the UK for sexual exploitation, the charity Barnardo's believes.

Or they may not, who knows? Best not to worry about it until someone presents some actual facts rather than idle speculation.

I'm not saying that they are definately wrong, but after the fiasco of the sex trafficking nonsense I don't think too many people will be willing to rely upon a report by 'campaigners' that says something "could" be happening or "may" be going on.

via Obnoxio.

Meaningless Statistic Of The Day.

A huge rise in the number of children calling to report sexual abuse by women has been revealed by Childline.

Over the past five years, the charity says the number of such calls has risen five times faster than youngsters reporting abuse by a man.

This is a useless figure on its own and the fact that it is being used as the headline figure suggests to me that the useful figures aren't nearly as scary sounding.

Sure enough the actually useful statistics aren't that dramatic, female abusers make up about 1/8th or the caseload of Childline. However even that is misleading because as Esther Rantzen says "we specifically targeted boys, hoping to reassure them that it was not a sign of weakness to ask for help with a difficult or painful problem.". So after targetting boys the number of boys who contacted them rose.

The thing is I'm sure much of what Childline and the NSPCC say is true- that sexual abuse by females is probably underreported due to a reluctance to acknowledge that it exists- however the use of dubious shock stats makes me think that someone is attempting to mislead me.

Fake Charity Double Whammy?

From the Scotsman:

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which has long campaigned on the issue, said there should be an extra hour of daylight all year round.

Brake, a UK road safety charity, said: "It is unacceptable so many families are torn apart by sudden, violent deaths and injuries on our roads. The government must take bold steps to stop these preventable casualties."

I'm not going to check their accounts, but I've never seen either of these outfits raising money so I'm guessing they are psuedo-charities.

Family Trusts & Tax Dodging- A Timeless Combination.

One of the ways the super rich avoid having their descendants pay tax on their inheritances or go on a mad spending spree that squanders the family fortune is to form charitable trusts which their family can administrate for a lucrative salary for generations, hence the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford foundations (the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is a bit different because that is planned so it will expire at some point in the future).

I'd always assumed this was a 20th century American invention, so was surprised to learn that it is a dodge that has been going on since at least the time of the medieval Ottoman Empire:

Under Islamic law property given to endow a Vakif {An Islamic Charity} could never be taken from it, and its income was meant to be tax free, many rich Muslims would appoint their descendants as salaried administrators of these endowments, thus creating in effect a financially advantageous family trust.

The quote is from Noel Malcolm's 'Kosovo- A Short History'.

The Ottomans hadn't advanced to the stage where the Sultan would pay the vakifs to lobby him, but it's interesting how similar tax arrangements will create similar dodges hundreds of years apart in completely different cultures.

Who Needs The Public?

Charities will lose public trust if they put political campaigning above helping the needy

Yes but so what? Who needs the public's trust when you can get free money from the government? I haven't checked but I bet most of the organisations listed in the article are fake charities.

Quote Of The Day.

A spokeswoman for Alcohol Concern said none of its government grant is used on its lobbying activities.

Yeah because money isn't fungible or anything.

I'm a bit late in linking to the Fake Charities website, although I did coin the term "psuedo charities" a couple of years ago to describe the same thing, so it is something which has bothered me for a while.