The Tories are turning against charities – with a vengeance
Is Oxfam really a branch of ‘Socialist International’, as Tories apparently believe?
Beneath the cynical rhetoric of David Cameron’s “big society” there was a proposition. It said to the voluntary sector: we need you. As we cut public spending we hope social provision can – at least to face-saving extent – step in. We will (they implied) cherish you, dish out knighthoods to your top people and invite them to join commissions and parlays.
Suddenly, the Tories turned. Tory MPs such as Priti Patel were encouraged to recruit the media in attacking charity “fat cats”. The cabinet sent the hapless third sector minister, Nick Hurd, to conferences to explain that not only would there be no extra money for charities to pick up the pieces from cuts to councils but they would have to put up with severe reductions in support.
When Chancellor George Osborne proposed cutting tax relief on charity donations, was it an accident or part of some grand design?
It’s been the same story with fundraising, where the NCVO’s Sir Stuart Etherington is proposing complicated new machinery that, even if it is really self-regulation, looks and smells like at least one new quango .
Meanwhile, the government is running a coach and horses through the charitable status of housing associations.
And, a further sign of alienation, charities appear to have been left out of the Osborne devolution agenda.
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not forgetting the fact that Charities are now banned by law in being involved in any way in the political process .. they put this in place BEFORE they went after the charities – no one ever said they were stupid, devious, despicable and pure evil maybe but not stupid
I completely agree. I am not a big fan of charities as I believe that much of the work they do should be the responsibility of the state and be fully funded and not at the whim of the vagaries of popular support. However given this callous government’s abdication of responsibility for the support of so many I am driven to support charities to try to help protect the victims of this ideologically focussed and morally bereft administration.
It is significant that the Victorian Values agenda of previous Tory regimes are no longer mentioned though the policies are in fact aimed at reversing all the progress we have made in society in the last hundred years.
I think it is a definite ploy to ensure that charities do not pick up the slack and do not speak out in a powerful way to criticise the welfare reforms. Don’t forget Oxfam took them on headfirst on poverty and then the accusations of being political followed with punishment on cuts in funding.
There has also been a very definite takeover in the personnel who are much more business oriented and up to all sorts of trickery under the guise of charity.
The real charities who are genuinely concerned about the welfare of people hit by the cuts are the ones being targeted. That is where informal groupings and support come in.
All charities not corporate sponsored and competing, in the very best market tradition, to provide the most awful disincentives and punishments for being, poor, unfortunate or disabled are clearly socialist, subversive and suspected terrorists.
I genuinely believe the gilded toffs are doing all they can to create a corporate sponsored kleptocracy, they’ve got five years to make as much of it happen as they can and are wasting little time.
Easier and quicker to list the sections of society that the Tories don’t hate and despise.
Does right wing Cameron know that Eton (and other public schools) is a charity? Watch for the exemptions.
Good point!
They are, but don’t worry, all he’ll do is increase the amount of govt funding to the Public Schools. It’s always turned my stomach that tax payers prop up the conveyor belt to privilege and sloth that is the Public/Private School system.
Not to mention paying for army officers’ children to attend them, to the tune of 84million last year.
Of course they are, charity begins at home, their stately homes, and getting nice and rich off it too, one day they’ll ban charities altogether so they’ll be no help for anyone!