The NSPCC, real or fake charity?
Friday, January 30, 2009
- Bishop Hill blog - The NSPCC - a danger to society.
Bishop Hill has upset me this morning. I have had a standing order to the NSPCC for some years. I was unaware that it was taking £14 million of government money and angry to find that it is supporting the government's current attacks on home schooling.
It's fine that Britain provides free-at-point-of-use state education for all. I have lots of issues with how it delivers that, but that's an issue for another day. There is no way, however, that state education should be compulsory. If I had not been lucky enough to afford private education for my children, my wife and I might well have preferred home schooling to a state system we knew well as ex-pupils and, in her case, as an ex-teacher. The government's campaign against home schooling has been disgusting - even implying that some home schoolers are doing it only to conceal their child abuse. The NSPCC's support for that campaign has nothing to do with its charitable purposes and - I suspect - everything to do with its status as a government front.
A charity that takes government money is not worthy of the name. Charity is all about voluntary contributions. Tax is, by definition, an involuntary contribution. Had the taxpayers wanted to give that £14 million to the NSPCC, they could have done so. They were not given the choice. Therefore nothing done with that money is truly "charity."
More insidiously fake charities, among which I am disappointed to suspect I must now number the NSPCC, are instruments of government policy and patronage. They are used to "astroturf" (create fake "grass roots" support for) government policies. They are used (through overpaid sinecure jobs) as a source of government party patronage. Many a Labour candidate in the next election wll boast of his or her work for charity, when in fact they were "parked" with that organisation by political influence.
I will cancel my monthly standing order to the NSPCC and write to explain why. My correspondence will no doubt be a waste of time. If the NSPCC's leadership is, as I now suspect, politically selected, the people concerned will know that full well. That one small donor has rumbled them is neither here nor there, in the context of £14 million extorted for them forcibly by their major sponsor in Whitehall.
Anon 02:20, do not fret.
The RNLI is entirely supported by voluntary donations and has established as a constitutional principle the rule that it will never accept state "aid".
They know the wells are poisoned!
Good on them. My (not insignificant) annual donation will continue.
Posted by: Andrew Duffin | Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 01:38 PM
What happens to the law surrounding home education is not just of concern to home educators. In seeking to control home educators, the state will in effect appropriate the duty educate and raise all children in England. Every English parent everywhere, schooling or otherwise, will no longer be responsible for ensuring the education and welfare of their children.
If you doubt this, read the questions in the recently instigated home education review: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/index.cfm?action=consultationDetails&consultationId=1605&external=no&menu=1
eg:
"Question 3: Do you think that Government and local authorities have an obligation to ensure that all children in this country are able to achieve the five outcomes? If you answered yes, how do you think Government should ensure this?. If you answered no, why do you think that?"
(The 5 outcomes eg: enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution, be safe, be healthy, are actually ambitions, not targets...see Every Child Matters...and LAs have NO legal duty to do anything other than to cooperate to promote these ambitions...see Section 10 Children Act 2004.)
It would help if all parents, not just home educating ones, responded to this review with a resounding "bog off".
There is a draft response here, if anyone needs any ideas:
http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/draft-response-to-review-of-home.html
Posted by: Carlotta | Monday, February 02, 2009 at 09:07 AM
Someone posted a comment on my site that the RNLI is still kosher.
Posted by: Bishop Hill | Sunday, February 01, 2009 at 08:00 PM
Please tell me that the RNLI is till a proper charity ?
Posted by: some bloke | Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 11:20 PM
Tom, thanks for posting this. I have long been slightly uncomfortable with the NSPCC, and recently did a bit of reading around on the web, and what I found made me a lot more uncomfortable. Your post has increased my conviction that the NSPCC is definitely not on the side of the angels.
Posted by: John | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 09:57 PM
David's school has really been pushing some form of sponsored maths fundraiser and it rang big alarm bells with me when I looked back at what DK had been saying.
Regrettably, most of the big names are glorified quangos and highly politicised.
Posted by: Ian Grey | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 09:17 PM
The advertising from the RSPCC has been to denigrate the role of the father in the home. This a political campaign against the family and they celebrate "National Divorce Day". Screwing with people's minds is a sexual act (ask the wife) and you don't even realize you're being stiffed by the elements in control of the organisation.
Posted by: Kinderling | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 06:16 PM
Guthrum
Is that separate to the fakecharities.org effort?
Posted by: Bishop Hill | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 04:50 PM
No, it doesn't. Will these control freaks leave us no garden of peace in our harassed lives? To have exploited and politicised the charitable impulse itself is disgusting. They know no shame at all, do they? It makes me very sad to be honest.
Sent from my iPhone
Posted by: Tom | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 02:39 PM
I guess I haven't picked up on it because I have not lived in Britain since 1992. I was genuinely shocked and feel I have been rooked.
Sent from my iPhone
Posted by: Tom | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 02:31 PM
There is a handy website called fakecharities.org
It's only been around a few weeks at most, but I think there is already a decent amount of information on there.
Posted by: Shackleford Hurtmore | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 01:54 PM
The LPUK research team are assembling a list of 'fake' charities.
Posted by: Guthrum | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 01:43 PM
I work in Soho and I see the clipboard charity workers all the time.
The next time one captures me my first question will be -- "can you prove to me that you receive no funding from the tax payer."
Posted by: tbrrob | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 11:16 AM
Tom, I am surprised you hadn't picked up on this sooner. Charities have become the Cheerleaders of the state over the last decade, and it suits the Government to patronise them. They are exempt from FOI, and can behave as an organ of the state without open accountability, in fact give the impression of the opposite. I am sure there are some legitimate charities around, but in my dealings with many of them as an IT contractor, they seem to be primarily about individual private gain and political power. As my mum always points out in 40s and 50s Britain charity was a dirty word, what goes around?
Posted by: Polaris | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 11:08 AM
I think you make very good points here.
It seems to me that a lot of charities sound and behave more like cheering sections for the patronising desire to control our lives that seems to be so much a part of the government and its paid employees these days. Stuff that should be none of their business.
Also with all these quangos and other bodies that get cash from the government and then dish it out to other bodies and they dish it out some more it is very difficult for ordinary people to easily tell what organisations are really just government glove puppets.
Even the RSPCA seems more like a government enforcement arm now. We support animal charities, but I am now pretty careful what ones We give money to, and the RSPCA is one I do not support any more.
I read the other day they took away a woman's dogs by a trick because they were over weight, despite that she had them on a diet and they had been loosing weight! Said she was abusing them.
What next? People's kids?
Posted by: Moggsy | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 10:53 AM
If it makes you feel any better, my monthly standing order (to Plan International) is going to have to be cancelled too. They are also getting millions from the state.
Posted by: Bishop Hill | Friday, January 30, 2009 at 09:41 AM