BS: Charities and Oxfam

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 11:58 AM

Not much use if the Charity Commission decide to freeze the bank accounts which they have said that they would consider as an option.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 11:39 AM

From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 10:53 AM
And if the government were to pull funding, is Mordaunt intellegent enough to put in place withing 1 hour an entire distribution infrastructure, transfer all the staff and volunteer support systems so that workers get paid and volunteers are fully supported in their roles, will the government match the money already donated by the public to Oxfam at zero cost to the tax payer, ie out of the pockets of their party supporters to this alternative charty/NGO that will be fully up and running in 60 minutes?

Oxfam retain financial reserves so that there would be no need to put in fresh infrastructure as an emergency matter. They aim to retain 'reserves' of 25 million pounds. Their accounts can be seen here: Latest annual accounts fortunately Oxfam appear to be well organised financially.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 11:19 AM

There might be a reason why the government is lax to change charity law to put more onus on public schools to prove that their area of benefit is not for the self-interest of the privileged few who use them. Just saying.....

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 11:16 AM

Many on your side would like to see foreign aid cut or stopped.
And many, if not all, on your side wish to see us remain part of a union which already spends less on aid that we do, and continue to align ourselves with them.

I don't wish to see our aid payments cut, but I do believe they could be better targeted.
I see Oxfam as one of the better means of redistributing some of the wealth this nation has.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 10:53 AM

And if the government were to pull funding, is Mordaunt intellegent enough to put in place withing 1 hour an entire distribution infrastructure, transfer all the staff and volunteer support systems so that workers get paid and volunteers are fully supported in their roles, will the government match the money already donated by the public to Oxfam at zero cost to the tax payer, ie out of the pockets of their party supporters to this alternative charty/NGO that will be fully up and running in 60 minutes?

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Iains
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 10:53 AM

Having seen how some of these bodies behave in the field I would say more oversight is definitely needed.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 10:40 AM

"Only a sicko like shaw and his tame acolytes would try to make political capital out of the very public, localised failure of a charity."

The whole tenor of my postings here has been to defend the charity and to oppose tabloid and Tory attacks on it. The political capital is being made from the Daily Mail, your main source of information, and a couple of Tory right-wingers whipping up anti-charity sentiment.

"By the way shaw public schools have charitable status. Are you so busy point scoring about brexit that you forgot that you regularly criticise their status?"

Nope. But most people here would think it distinctly odd if I suddenly brought it up in a thread about Oxfam. On the other hand, what has happened in the brexit debate with regard to leavers fuelling xenophobia is relevant to the anti-foreign aid sentiment that's being whipped up by the Mail and the International Development Department. Start a thread on public schools and I'll go to town on you, worry ye not.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 10:38 AM

Why just restrict the safeguards to charity workers. Surely the duty to behave with propriety should then apply to every company, business person, politician, even holiday maker. Charities are tightly regulated, they have to account for how their funds have been used and split spend on charitable objects from governance, support costs, fundraising so that it is wholly transparent on the Charities Commission website as to how much of the money donated goes directly to furthering the aims of the charity and potential donors (if they can be bothered) can judge for themselves as to how well the money is used. Again as to the impropriety of a handful of aid workers, and the lack of transparency (if any) in the way that the discretion was handled is purely a disciplinary matter, and unless as I said above Mordaunt and the right-wing press are not applying the same levels of outrage to other organisations/businesses/individuals as well as charities they are (at best) hypocritical, at worst, attacking the wellbeing of those that aid charities and NGOs are there to hel.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 10:27 AM

What's it like having a stalker ready to pounce on your every word, Steve?

Well, I could tell ya some stories, Dave......

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 10:24 AM

Many on your side would like to see foreign aid cut or stopped. Unless you've jumped ship and come over from the dark side, Nigel. And I made it perfectly clear that the xenophobia generated by the brexit debate all came from the brexiteer side. Your side, Nigel. It doesn't matter how many racists or xenophobes you think are lurking among us remainers. There will be some, but nowhere near as many as on your side, though it's as irrelevant to this discussion in any case as would be arguing about how many remainers/leavers believe in God as they didn't articulate it in the brexit debate. During the debate, it all came from leave. All of it. And it feeds into the anti-foreigner, anti-aid narrative, as do the intemperate remarks of Penny Mordaunt. And you now have the discredited Priti Patel upping the ante. Must make you feel good having these sanctimonious buggers on your side. As SPB-Cooperator said earlier, if just one person dies or suffers anywhere in the world as a result of aid being delayed because of this... Well, I suppose we could just blame somebody else, couldn't we?

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Iains
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 10:11 AM

When I was a kid scoutmasters were scoutmasters and teachers were teachers and nothing further was thought about it. Today no-one can work near children without being thoroughly vetted. Does anyone here think that is a bad thing? Does the world stop going round because of a hiatus caused by vetting? Of course it does not - We live in a more enlightened time and regard such safeguards as essential in order to offer the maximum levels of protection to children.
   Why do we not have more safeguards built into the running of charities. I see no difference between the objectives of both processes. i.e.maximum good for minimum harm!
   Only a sicko like shaw and his tame acolytes would try to make political capital out of the very public, localised failure of a charity. By the way shaw public schools have charitable status. Are you so busy point scoring about brexit that you forgot that you regularly criticise their status?

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 09:31 AM

UK does meet its moral obligations, the EU publishes details of Aid giving as a percentage of GDP, and the UK shows up very well in comparison with most of the EU members: EU aid explorer

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 09:04 AM

The response to Mog is that if UK fails to meet its moral obligations, and if ever in the future it faces a humanitarian disaster, there needs to be a common international accord to just do nothing and let the British victims rot.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 08:55 AM

A Labour MP pointed out today that those of an uncharitable nature will use this as a weapon against all foreign aid - as if some of THE FUNDOS needed an excuse
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: peteglasgow
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 08:54 AM

oops - sorry, strayed off into another thread there

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: peteglasgow
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 08:53 AM

well said, steve. i used to feel that the world was generally progressing in a more enlightened, more liberal way with a few stumbling blocks here and there. in recent years - in this country anyway - we just keep going backwards and as you say it's a 'new isolationist narrative' driven by global capitalists and the very wealthy. i've heard and read many defences of the idea of a hard brexit - they all boil down to a gut, emotional feeling about foreigners or a thinly disguised, more eloquently expressed, racism.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 08:52 AM

And of course the brexit debate has fuelled xenophobia, all the doing of brexiteers, not remainers
Ah, changed from 'Brexit' to 'the Brexit debate'. You may be getting there.
But, if the brexit debate has fuelled xenophobia, how can you excuse the remainers. Without them (admittedly a minority) there would be no debate, and you are now blaming the debate for fuelling xenophobia.

It's all feeding into a new isolationIst narrative that's gaining ground
It's not being isolationist to want to be able to trade globally without interference from Brussels.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 08:44 AM

I have no doubt there are some in Oxfam and elsewhere who exploited people into prostitutes: all power corrupts, don't you know. However, I see little evidence it is widespread yet, nor anything to make references to the orgies of Caligula appropriate.

More oversight? Yes, of workers in the field ny the organisation. Oversight of the organisation by child protection and similar specialists? Again, yes. But by people who were calling for foreign aid to be cut before this surfaced? I don't think so.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 08:33 AM

The relevance is that antipathy towards commitment to foreign aid was one of the central tenets of the most rabid leave campaigners, and anyone who voted leave because of this therefore did so on an immoral basis.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 08:02 AM

Oh, he's harmless, Dave. He could use a bit of help I suppose.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 08:01 AM

The brexit DEBATE for Christ's sake. I know we haven't had brexit yet. And of course the brexit debate has fuelled xenophobia, all the doing of brexiteers, not remainers. Taking back control of our borders, uncontrolled immigration, foreigners putting strain on public services and driving down wages...where have you been for the last two years, Nigel? What remainers have you heard saying any of that xenophobic bullshit? Now we have Mordaunt threatening Oxfam, putting charity-giving into the unwanted limelight, and we hear calls for cutting foreign aid. Don't be naive, Nigel. It's all feeding into a new isolationIst narrative that's gaining ground. It isn't just Trump, and it's exactly how wars start.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 08:00 AM

What's it like having a stalker ready to pounce on your every word, Steve?

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 07:46 AM

All this feeds into the crude xenophobia that brexit has helped, deliberately of course, to exacerbate.

Once again, personal opinion being paraded as fact.

How can 'Brexit' have done anything deliberately? It is an event, not an individual.
There may be xenophobes within the Brexit movement, but it is wrong to attribute their motives to Brexit.
There will also be racists in the Brexit movement. That does not mean that Brexit is racist.

It is also probable that there are both racists and xenophobes amongst those who voted to remain within the EU. But I doubt that that would help your case in any way, so you will doubtless continue with your current views.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 07:28 AM

That's what I'm worried about. All this feeds into the crude xenophobia that brexit has helped, deliberately of course, to exacerbate.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 07:24 AM

This is a matter for the charity's own disciplinary procedures from which no staff (up to the highest levels in management if they have engaged in misconduct) should be immune.

The charity (ie the vast majority of its employees and volunteers) must be able to carry on the important work it does without hindrance. That includes the threat by the Charity Commission of possibly freezing the charities accounts. Similarly Mordant must shut her interfering mouth.

If one person dies or suffers anywhere in the world as a result of aid being delayed because of this, or through loss of public support for the work of the charity, then Mordant, the idiots who voted for her, and the Charity Commission staff will be by default murdering **** and should be treated by decent society as such.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 07:02 AM

Oxfam is fairly decentralized. The kinds of abuse recently reported are what happens when a local manager decides to suppress complaints rather than getting them acted on, or letting the law take its course.

Charities have been forced to structure themselves like private companies and the authoritarian power structures that result sometimes lead to the same outcomes as in a large capitalist enterprise. (As Joe knows, I am not just making this up, I am writing from experience). It is very unusual for problems to be more than local issues, and I very much doubt they are more than that at Oxfam. But a local manager who sees criminal activity by a volunteer as a threat to their own career, and as such something to hush up, can cause a lot of damage.

Obviously the Mail wants most charities destroyed, and foreign aid ones in particular, as they are nearly all opposed to its Nazi political project. As a Corbynite, Helen Evans (the Labour councillor responsible for feeding this story to the tabloids) shares that faction's grovelling submission to the fascists.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Kenny B (inactive)
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 06:58 AM

Steve
Sex sells newspapers to dwindling band of readers and while the readers are getting justifiably uptight and genuinely concerned about this revelation it takes the heat away from other issues.

Question:- do any of us really think that charities will be subject to increased scrutiny .... a simple yes or no will be sufficient ....chance would be a fine thing ( smiley)

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 06:17 AM

Agreed, Roger. Slightly off the point, maybe, but I do think that charities in general should be closely monitored to ensure that donations are not being wasted on excessive wages, junkets and unduly heavy bureaucracy. At least a hundred million dollars of donations to Mother Teresa's charity was used for anything but helping the people the donors thought they were helping. No-one was watching the saintly lady anything like closely enough. I suspect that the same could be true of a good few charities, which are generally somewhat protected by that fuzzy warm feeling the very word "charity" generates. But the vast majority of charity workers are doing their best and what we don't need is a few miscreants giving ammunition to the sensationalist gutter press cheerled by the Mail and to mean-spirited and unpleasant hawks such as Penny Mordaunt and Priti Patel. There's already a persistent undercurrent running through these discussions, perpetuated by the right and by ignorant isolationists, that we should be scrapping international aid. The audience member who advocated that on Question Time last week received lynch mob-style applause.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 05:59 AM

So I take that you've now brushed aside the Daily Mail article, replete with such scandalous things as photos of the outside of a building with trees, some settees with coffee table and a sparsely-furnished bedroom with mattress devoid of bedding (a double mattress though - shock horror! Pity they couldn't find a C of E vicar, wearing suspenders accompanied by a couple of bikini-clad "escorts" fondling him, to lie on it). Still, you've now come to the conclusion that most charity workers are in it for the right reasons and that, contrary to the implication in your opening post, that they aren't all in it in order to set up Caligulan orgies. That's progress, I suppose. But that's two Daily Mails in one morning. You still have a long way to go.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 05:47 AM

Charities and NGOs employ thousands of people. All abuses should be investigated and action taken BUT I wonder what percentage of all these thousands are involved. UK Parliament has 600 members, the percentage of sex pests etc in Parliament is, I suspect, much higher, but they are not suggesting stopping paying all MPs! Withholding funds just hurts the people they are trying to help.
RtS

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Iains
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 05:43 AM

Joe. Sadly the evidence seems to exist. Undoubtedly most charity workers are there for honourable reasons and can hold their heads high. It only requires a few misbehaving to taint the entire operation. Do we condemn the entire operation or seek to put measures in place to prevent a repetition?
Should we go down the former path we would have to shut down UN peacekeeping operations because they also exhibit less than saintly behaviour in some areas.

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 05:23 AM

I'm certain that the vast majority of Oxfam workers are in in it for the right reasons, in many cases having forgone much better-paid job opportunities.

Know what I mean, Joe?

Subject: RE: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 05:15 AM

Gee, Ians, in the US, we think of Oxfam as the Ultimate Charity of Integrity. I tend to think that the article you linked to is, like, really weird. I mean like, really, really weird.
Do you believe it yourself?
An Oxfam orgy?

-JOe-

Subject: BS: Charities and Oxfam
From: Iains
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 05:07 AM

Have the infamous exploits of Oxfam caused irreparable damage to all charities. We are used to seeing figures illustrating how little money collected actually ends up being spent on "good works". This data is barely acceptable, but tacitly accepted. But to me it seems charities are becoming increasingly polarised to serve different agendas. On the one hand we have the caligulan exploits of Oxfam, on the other we have the politicisation of the National Trust, and taken to extremes, some very dodgy charitable foundations.

Do charities in the UK require more transparency, more oversight,or a root and branch overhaul of the entire concept of giving and what actually defines a charity?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5383251/Inside-Oxfams-Caligula-orgy-villa.html