Charity Kids Co. director asked to step down.

Charity Kids Co. director asked to step down.

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carinaman

21,346 posts

173 months

Wednesday 5th August 2015
quotequote all
Symbolica said:
Just noticed another quite detailed article appeared in the Spectator yesterday evening:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/milesgoslett/2015/08/...
Yentob lobbied the Treasury over an unpaid tax bill? The charity had made tax deductions from employees and not paid those deductions to the Inland Revenue?

HarryW

15,158 posts

270 months

Wednesday 5th August 2015
quotequote all
carinaman said:
Symbolica said:
Just noticed another quite detailed article appeared in the Spectator yesterday evening:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/milesgoslett/2015/08/...
Yentob lobbied the Treasury over an unpaid tax bill? The charity had made tax deductions from employees and not paid those deductions to the Inland Revenue?
Yentob always struck me as an intelligent man, wtf is he doing getting embroiled in this lot. It was never going to end well particularly when you start messing with hmrc.....

Du1point8

21,612 posts

193 months

Wednesday 5th August 2015
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GloverMart said:
The woman who runs the Bristol centres, (Esther ??) was talking about this on our local news tonight. She said that she was abroad due to family reasons but had arranged for her house to go on the market as she wouldn't be able to afford to run it any more.

Is it me or is that a little bit hasty? Effectively made redundant today, wouldn't you at least try to do a deal with your mortgage company to stay where you are? So much of this seems so over-the-top dramatic, somewhat apt given the woman at the top.
One can easily ask for a mortgage holiday of up to 6 months and most will agree rather than go through the repossession route.

carinaman

21,346 posts

173 months

Wednesday 5th August 2015
quotequote all
HarryW said:
carinaman said:
Symbolica said:
Just noticed another quite detailed article appeared in the Spectator yesterday evening:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/milesgoslett/2015/08/...
Yentob lobbied the Treasury over an unpaid tax bill? The charity had made tax deductions from employees and not paid those deductions to the Inland Revenue?
Yentob always struck me as an intelligent man, wtf is he doing getting embroiled in this lot. It was never going to end well particularly when you start messing with hmrc.....
That piece on the Spectator website says that was back in 2002. Seems the money owed to the HMRC was written off at public expense (£589,000). Seems we've allowed this charity to escape paying tax like household name Internet retailers or High Street Coffee shop chains.

dxg

8,243 posts

261 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
Well, the lead-in piece to the interview currently running on Radio 4 was sickening.

Basically getting kids to lionise, by name, the head of this organisation with some very directed questioning.

anonymous-user

55 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
If even half of the allegations against the charity are well founded, the Charities Commission appears to have been even more AWOL than usual.

Civil servants appear to have been concerned about this charity for some time (contrary to the usual PH assumption, many civil servants are conscientious and seek to serve the the public interest and protect public money). If it is true that Cameron intervened to over ride the objections of civil servants and junior ministers, then his judgment does appear to have been shockingly poor.

Eric Mc

122,109 posts

266 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
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I agree. The absence of any comment from the Charity Commissioners is telling.

Smiler.

11,752 posts

231 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
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John Hump interviewing Carmila Batman on R4 just now.

They played a clip of a kid who described "brown envelope" day - how they went straight to the shops & bought stuff or drugs "there was so much weed, you could smell it all the down to London Bridge".


One could sense the birth of the benefit culture in action.

As for the rest of the interview, RTC.


hornetrider

63,161 posts

206 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
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Smiler. said:
They played a clip of a kid who described "brown envelope" day - how they went straight to the shops & bought stuff or drugs "there was so much weed, you could smell it all the down to London Bridge".
Those poor kids. How dare we take away their cash for scag?

Eric Mc

122,109 posts

266 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
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Had a look at the Charity Commissioners (CC) website and downloaded the accounts. The last set filed at the CC covered the year ended 31 December 2013 - so the 2014 accounts had not been filed yet.

http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends...

The accounts take up 61 pages. The actual figures start around Page 40.

Edited by Eric Mc on Thursday 6th August 08:55

Pesty

42,655 posts

257 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
hornetrider said:
Smiler. said:
They played a clip of a kid who described "brown envelope" day - how they went straight to the shops & bought stuff or drugs "there was so much weed, you could smell it all the down to London Bridge".
Those poor kids. How dare we take away their cash for scag?
One lady who left the charter years ago mentioned envelope day as one reason. Talking about lots of noise and shouting etc etc. I wonder why that could be a problem I also wonder what others may do to weak and vulnerable people who they know have brown envelopes in their pockets.

Smiler.

11,752 posts

231 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
hornetrider said:
Smiler. said:
They played a clip of a kid who described "brown envelope" day - how they went straight to the shops & bought stuff or drugs "there was so much weed, you could smell it all the down to London Bridge".
Those poor kids. How dare we take away their cash for scag?
To be fair, this whole affair is reminiscent to me of parts of the TV series The Wire.

People with good intentions alter their perspective & lose their way in the midst of overwhelming statistics. Political parties & their servants succumbed to this many years ago.

The "greater good" indeed.

anonymous-user

55 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
Pesty said:
hornetrider said:
Smiler. said:
They played a clip of a kid who described "brown envelope" day - how they went straight to the shops & bought stuff or drugs "there was so much weed, you could smell it all the down to London Bridge".
Those poor kids. How dare we take away their cash for scag?
........ I also wonder what others may do to weak and vulnerable people who they know have brown envelopes in their pockets.
Perhaps find out that they aren't as 'weak and vulnerable' as one might think?


The Don of Croy

6,005 posts

160 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
From the Spectator article, one of the emails;

From: Anna Butterworth
Date: 31 July 2015 at 18:03
Subject: Re: [all-staff] updated statement from Kids Company
To: Marianna Davis
Cc: All Staff

Dear all,

We have been given confirmation that we will not be featured on the news tonight. Please don’t share this statement externally.

Hope you have restful weekends!

Anna

- it's almost as if someone had tipped them they could have a night off...

Eric Mc

122,109 posts

266 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
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A couple of years ago someone on PH started a thread bemoaning the fact that the RNLI received no financial support from government/taxpayer.

The general response was that they were far better off keeping well away from any sort of official government funding because once you start receiving such funding you eventually become embroiled in politics.

The events of the past few days just show how true this is.

dxg

8,243 posts

261 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
Smiler. said:
John Hump interviewing Carmila Batman on R4 just now.

They played a clip of a kid who described "brown envelope" day - how they went straight to the shops & bought stuff or drugs "there was so much weed, you could smell it all the down to London Bridge".


One could sense the birth of the benefit culture in action.

As for the rest of the interview, RTC.
As much as I despise the BBC, that was actually a reasonable interview. Her approach was to blame everyone else for either 1) giving them money; or 2) failing to spot that they were using the money inappropriately.

Every time she was asked to explain her lack of governance and forward planning, her response was a quite literal "think of the children." Her attempts to highlight the "personal" case of someone - who turned from a child on a platform about throw themselves in front a train to a young adult about to throw himself off a bridge during the course of interview - were pitiful in light of the media strategy she outlined herself in one of the Spectator internal emails (in the article linked above).

She even blamed the government and the civil service for failing to tell her how to run her charity; completely failing to recognise any division of responsibility. I got the distinct impression that she ran the thing as a clearing house for government cash, without any governance for the allocation of that cash. It seems that "so many children" were turning up for their brown envelopes of cash (with no, it seems, controls or follow up or education in how to use them), that they just couldn't get enough government money quickly enough. A slight cashflow problem that is hardly surprising given that this charity's solution seems to have been "here, take this wodge of cash."

Edited by dxg on Thursday 6th August 09:18

Roy Lime

594 posts

133 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
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Looks like it's curtains for Camila Batmanghelidjh.


anonymous-user

55 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
Eric Mc said:
Had a look at the Charity Commissioners (CC) website and downloaded the accounts. The last set filed at the CC covered the year ended 31 December 2013 - so the 2014 accounts had not been filed yet.


http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends...

The accounts take up 61 pages. The actual figures start around Page 40.

Edited by anonymous-user on Thursday 6th August 08:55
So, over £15M from £23M spent on staff costs.

Eric Mc

122,109 posts

266 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
One interesting figure in the accounts of the charity is the Debtors figure of around £5 million at 31 December 2013. The total gross income of the charity was £23 million. They are therefore saying that almost almost 1/5 of the income shown in the profit and loss account had not yet been received at the year end date.

I'd like to know a little bit more about why this was the case. It does seem rather high for an organisation that essentially receives cash donations. Why would it have any significant "debtors" i.e. unrecieved donations, at all?

Camoradi

4,294 posts

257 months

Thursday 6th August 2015
quotequote all
Eric Mc said:
One interesting figure in the accounts of the charity is the Debtors figure of around £5 million at 31 December 2013. The total gross income of the charity was £23 million. They are therefore saying that almost almost 1/5 of the income shown in the profit and loss account had not yet been received at the year end date.

I'd like to know a little bit more about why this was the case. It does seem rather high for an organisation that essentially receives cash donations. Why would it have any significant "debtors" i.e. unrecieved donations at all?
They raise invoices up front for donations? As you say, sounds a little odd...