Tag Archives: charity

MPs launch ‘rule-breaking’ complaint against Institute of Economic Affairs | Good Law Project

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng: if their mini-budget was based on advice from the IEA, then that organisation has been involved in political campaigning, contrary to Charity Commission rules.

This is well-deserved, it seems. Charities must not be involved in political campaigning, or linked with political offshoot organisations. One wonders what the “educational research” entails:

The “extremist” charity the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has been called out for repeated rule breaking, after a cross-party group of MPs and a charity OBE made a formal complaint to the Charity Commission.

Layla Moran MP from the Liberal Democrats called for the commission to act with “utmost urgency”.

“One charity promoting extremist views and acting outside the rules is a blight on the whole sector,” Moran said.

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Along with Moran, Alyn Smith MP from the Scottish National Party, Clive Lewis MP from the Labour Party and Siân Berry AM – parliamentary candidate from the Green Party have joined a former member of the commission’s own board, Dr. Andrew Purkis OBE, to argue that the IEA falls foul of regulations around political campaigning, educational research and inappropriate links with openly political offshoot organisations.

Despite clear guidance from the commission that a charity’s purpose should not be political, the IEA was widely seen as the inspiration for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini budget. According to political commentator Tim Montgomerie, the disastrous September 2022 mini budget was a “massive moment for the IEA” who had been advocating the policies for years.

Charity rules also state research must avoid presenting “biased and selective information in support of a preconceived point of view”. The IEA promotes extreme views such as there being “no sensible scientific objection” to increasing drilling in the North Sea, that healthcare in the UK should be insurance-based and that regulation on disposable vapes should be removed. It has so far refused to admit who pays for its work, but investigations have revealed some of its funding comes from the gas, oil and tobacco industries.

Commission guidance also states that charities must not “fund or support non-charitable purposes”, yet the IEA backs offshoots such as such as the IEA Forum and 1828 that aim to promote a “free market message”.

It’s a scandal that an organisation which pushes an extreme political agenda and seems so plainly in breach of charity regulations should continue to benefit from the tax advantages charitable status affords.

The Charity Commission, whose job it is to regulate charities and ensure that they comply with charity law, has received repeated complaints about the IEA over the last decade. But so far it has failed to act.

This will be a valuable test case.

Who next? The Campaign Against Antisemitism, perhaps?

Source: MPs launch complaint against Institute of Economic Affairs – Good Law Project


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Asylum seekers on Bibby Stockholm are doing better work than Tory politicians

The barge: Bibby Stockholm seems to have become home to a group of people who are having a hugely positive effect volunteering to help homeless people in Portland and Weymouth. Perhaps asylum-seekers are better than Tory politicians have pretended?

Asylum-seekers who have been detained by the Tory government on the Bibby Stockholm barge are doing charity work in Portland and nearby Weymouth, it has been revealed.

They aren’t allowed to work for wages while they wait for the Tory-run Home Office to assess their asylum claims.

Instead, some of them are filling the huge amount of free time on their hands by volunteering for charities:

Azad [not his real name], an asylum seeker currently living on the Bibby Stockholm barge, is devoting his time to volunteering for homeless charities in Weymouth… and Portland, helping to cook and distribute food for those who are living on the streets during the coldest months of the year.

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Several of the asylum seekers living on the barge have now begun volunteering with local charities – and in particular, charities working with homeless people.

Some of the men on board the barge have experience in charity work, having worked for organisations in their home countries… Others have volunteered at charities in London or other parts of the country where they were housed before moving to the Bibby Stockholm.

The asylum seekers receive around £9 a week as an allowance to spend on food or leisure in Weymouth or Portland… Azad said he spends the majority of his weekly allowance on food to give to homeless people in Weymouth.

Compare this with the antics of the Tory MPs in Parliament, whose policies seem designed to make as many people homeless as possible – and who seem unlikely to spend any time working to ease the lives of those their policies have ruined.

Source: Portland barge: Asylum seekers helping homeless charities | Dorset Echo


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Labour’s plan for public schools is controversial; here’s why

Eton: it’s just a school. Why should it have charitable status or VAT exemptions to make the £50,000-per-year tuition fees go even further than they already do?

On one hand, it’s just another broken Keir Starmer promise.

But it seems to have created a lot more heat than might be expected.

Here’s what’s going on:

Labour has dropped plans to end charitable status for private schools but says it will still remove other tax breaks if it wins the next general election.

The status exempts some private schools in England and Wales from taxes.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer had previously said charitable status for private schools could not be justified.

The party now says it can remove “unfair tax breaks” without changing the rules on charitable status.

There are about 2,500 private schools in England and Wales and the government says half are registered as charities.

Having charitable status means schools can not operate for a profit and are eligible to claim some tax exemptions, for example, on donations and business rates.

Since 2006, private schools have had to demonstrate they were creating “public benefit” to maintain their charitable status.

Labour says it would charge private schools 20% VAT, as well as ending business rates relief, to raise an estimated £1.7bn.

It’s the last bit that is causing trouble among some commentators, it seems.

Labour is saying its plan was always to remove tax breaks that the party seems to believe give private schools an advantage over state-run schools.

In fact, education in the UK is a mess – due in part to the encroachment of privatisation into the state sector, with privately-run academies whose owners seem to collapse with alarming regularity, only to be replaced with more doomed privateers.

A few decades ago, some corner-cutting government (does it matter whether it was Labour or Tory?) decided to build new schools using RAAC concrete, and now those buildings are falling down. This does not improve the state of, well, state education either.

Meanwhile, on the private side, we have seen schools like Eton unleash one dunce after another into the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. Boris Johnson is living proof that an Eton education is not the gold standard it once was.

But the “Old School Tie” network means these numbskulls can climb the slippery pole to success with much less effort than the rest of us, despite being far less deserving of it.

Result: well, you can see it all around you. The UK is on the brink of collapse.

The fact is that neither Labour nor the Tories have anything like a decent grip on what needs to be done.

So they argue about side issues like VAT as if they matter, and then fall to personal insults:

Time to let somebody else make an educated guess at how to solve this?


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Help these charity runners fund a retreat to boost mental health in UK armed forces

Forming a positive baseline (left-right): Craig, Barney and Steve, training for their run at Cosford on September 30.

A friend of This Writer is joining a 24-hour running challenge to raise funding for a charity that helps UK armed forces personnel cope with mental ill-health.

Craig Chihuri, who lives here in Mid Wales, will join Barney Tierney, Steve Dowd and Dr Rebecca Cam to run 74 miles in 24 hours at RAF Cosford Athletic track, starting at midday next Saturday (September 30, 2023).

The group is raising funds to develop a holistic and positive seven-day retreat for anyone who has served, and is still serving, in any branch of the UK military, who wishes to improve their mindset and outlook.

The retreat will be run by Head Up – Mental Health awareness for UK Armed Forces. The charity was created by four veterans to help forces personnel build a positive mindset and improve their mental resilience.

“There have been a lot of ex-Army people who have been struggling with their mental health,” said Craig, “so if we can raise awareness, and raise a bit of money, it will be great.

“Head Up charity is great – it’s smaller, it’s coming up, so there’s more focus on raising that awareness.”

“Both myself and Craig, over the last four or five years, have done different events for Mind,” added Barney. “Over the past 18 months or so, I have worked at RAF Cosford, so I wanted to relate it to where I work and find a mental health charity within the military.

“We’ve done bike rides from Birmingham to Aberystwyth, then we ran from Birmingham to Aberystwyth, and then we went up and down Snowdon nine times.

“I feel like this one could potentially be up there with the hardest,” he said. “It’s purely 24 hours through the night. We’ve never done anything where you haven’t got a rest through the whole 24 hours. It’s 74 miles in 24 hours and we’ve never done anything on that scale before.”

More details about Head Up are available here.

These runners are relying on your support, so please dig out some pennies and give them a boost. Barney is running a JustGiving page so please make your donation here.


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Tory Charity Commission chair warns charities to stay out of politics | Left Foot Forward

Suella Braverman arrives in Rwanda: charities are being told not to criticise her unworkable deportation scheme by a Charity Commission chairman who has strong Conservative connections.

What do you think of a Charity Commission chairman with strong links to the Conservative Party telling charity bosses to stay out of politics?

Orlando Fraser once stood as a Tory party candidate and is a founding fellow of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a right-wing think tank.

If anybody shouldn’t be involved with organisations that are supposed to be politically impartial, wouldn’t that be him?

And look at his reason for telling charity bosses to shut up:

Many launched a scathing attack on the unworkable and inhumane plan to send migrants to Rwanda

So it could be argued that he was silencing them for political reasons himself.

While the comment has been welcomed by Tory politicians, the author of the Left Foot Forward piece highlighting his words has pointed out that Tories have no problem with charities that support their policies, like

the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which was chaired by the former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson and which has previously been found to have breached rules on impartiality by the Charity Commission

and

the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), another charity, [which] often associated with the right and which was behind many of the ideas contained in Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget which caused financial turmoil, has also published climate change denial material and pushed for privatisation.

So the question is this: if right-wing charities are allowed to trumpet whatever they like but left-wing charities aren’t – because the Charity Commission chairman is a Tory…

Isn’t it the Charity Commission that is politically biased and shouldn’t it be purged of this taint?

Source: Charity Commission chair with links to Tory Party warns charities to stay out of politics – Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK’s progressive debate


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Shapps pretends to be money-saving expert – but Martin Lewis has other concerns…

Isn’t it offensive when government ministers pretend to be concerned about the well-being of the proles and try to show us how to save money?

And isn’t it worse when media giants like the BBC play into their hands?

Perhaps that’s why Grant Shapps’s attempt to play at being money-saving expert Martin Lewis fell as flat as it did:

This Writer hasn’t heard Mr Lewis saying anything about it – but then, he’s been wrapped up in other concerns…

He has joined YouTube stars Mark and Roxanne Hall – otherwise known as LadBaby – to record a Christmas song raising money for people affected by the cost-of-living crisis created by Tory ministers like Shapps.

Proceeds from their cover of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas will be shared equally between food bank charity The Trussell Trust and the Band Aid Foundation.

According to the BBC (how ironic),

“We never intended to release a fifth Christmas single but as ambassadors of the Trussell Trust we were not prepared to sit back and do nothing in a year when people are struggling more than ever,” Mark and Roxanne said in a statement.

They approached Bob Geldof and Midge Ure (the original writers of Do They Know It’s Christmas) to ask for permission six months ago.

“I wasn’t as difficult as people might think,” said Mark.

“Bob said he was excited to see what we were going to do, and they’ve approved everything – all the lyrics we wrote, the music video, who we got involved. Everything.”

Lewis said he was amazed to have been approached for help.

“I thought they’d confused me with someone else,” he said. “The nearest I’ve ever got to thinking about a Christmas number one is going to the loo on Boxing Day after too much orange juice the day before.

“Yet once I knew they were serious, and it was for the Trussell Trust, a hugely important charity I’ve a history with, I decided to give it a go, and do it with gusto.”

Mark said he had approached the money-saving expert because “he knows more than most how to help people in this country”.

Here’s the result of their work:

The song is available right now, right here:  https://ladbaby.lnk.to/FoodAidID!6

Remember: 100 per cent of profits from every download of the recording will go towards the fight against food hunger – and that could make a real difference to lives across the country.

Hapless Conservative chairman donates ‘Partygate souvenir’ to charity

Perhaps it’s right that the Conservative Party should have a hapless fool like Oliver Dowden as its chairman – he reflects the state of the organisation he runs.

Dowden’s latest blunder is his donation of a bottle of champagne signed by Boris Johnson to a Hertfordshire charity, for inclusion in a fundraising auction.

That organisation cannily listed the item as follows [boldings mine]: “A bottle of champagne signed by Boris. Hugely valuable as a souvenir of partygate and the examplary behaviour and morality of our dear leader!”

See for yourself:

A spokesperson for Dowden said, “this item was donated in good faith several months ago” and “this is obviously not his view” after the auction leaflet was shared on Twitter.

Of course it doesn’t matter if the bottle was donated several months ago – the Covid-19 lockdown-busting Downing Street parties had been taking place under the prime minister’s nose since April or May 2020.

Whether Dowden knew about it at the time he passed on the bottle is more debatable. But we have video evidence of Allegra Stratton laughing and joking about a party that took place on December 18, 2020 (and for which 50 people have just been fined), that was taken four days later.

If Dowden didn’t know about this, then he’s clearly unfit to do his job, and nor was his immediate forerunner, Amanda Milling, if she did not have that information to pass on to him.

Then there’s the question of Dowden’s reaction to the way the lot was accepted by the charity:

Probably more damning still is this observation:

So we have a Tory chairman who should have known about the Partygate allegations at the time, donating a bottle of champagne signed by Boris Johnson that he should have known – or should have been advised – could cause embarrassment to his party and government, to a charity that greeted the donation with hilarity (indicating that this happened after the scandal became public knowledge); he apparently did nothing to counter that response at the time.

And now he’s complaining about the way it has been marketed in a fundraising auction.

This man is too stupid for words.

If the Tory leadership – Johnson – had any teeth, Dowden would be heading for the backbenches with his tail between his legs, there to stay for the rest of what we should expect to be a mercifully short career.

But it is a sign of the weakness of Johnson’s team that this embarrassment to the name of Conservatism will probably go unpunished in any way.

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Nadine Dorries appoints new charity regulator – the wrong way

Nadine Dorries: wrong again.

If you heard a job had become available because a candidate had failed, went for it, and then found you weren’t considered because the bosses couldn’t be bothered to do it all again, wouldn’t you be upset?

If so, you can understand why the House of Commons Culture committee refused to endorse Nadine Dorries’s decision to make Orlando Fraser the new chair of the Charity Commission.

Mr Fraser was only appointed because Dorries’s original choice – Martin Thomas, who was reported to be a long-time friend of Boris Johnson – resigned after just a week in the job over allegations of inappropriate behaviour in a previous post.

She simply went back to her shortlist and appointed the candidate who was next on the list – to the disgust of the Culture committee:

Withholding its approval for Mr Fraser’s appointment, the cross-party Culture Committee said in its report that Ms Dorries should have initiated an entirely new selection process at that point, rather than picking another candidate from the existing shortlist.

The “slapdash” failure to rerun the process raised “serious concerns” about the selection process and the lack of diversity in the shortlist, the committee said.

The controversy has cast a shadow over Mr Fraser’s tenure, before he even started in the job.

No matter what he does now, he will always be considered a second-best choice who only get the role because a government minister couldn’t be bothered to do her job properly.

Source: Nadine Dorries appoints new charity regulator in face of objections from parliamentary committee

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New whistleblower says Boris Johnson put animals before humans in Afghanistan evacuation

Josie Stewart – a senior official at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) – has said it was “widespread knowledge” that the decision to help the Nowzad charity evacuate cats and dogs from Afghanistan “came from the prime minister”.

She said emails in her inbox referred to “the PM’s decision on Nowzad”.

This supports claims made in two Foreign Office emails that were released to the public in January.

As I wrote back then:

“One lobbies for the rescue of a second animal charity because Johnson had agreed to evacuate Nowzad: “The PM has just authorised their staff and animals to be evacuated.”

“The second, between FO officials, states: “In light of the PM’s decision earlier today [August 25, 2021] to evacuate the staff of the Nowzad animal charity, the [other animal charity – name redacted] is asking for agreement to the entry of [details redacted] staff, all Afghan nationals.”

“The issue is controversial because human beings were left behind. Some have since travelled out of Afghanistan and tried to gain entry into the country.

“Damningly for the UK’s Tory government, some have died in the attempt.”

Ms Stewart accused Sir Philip Barton, the Foreign Office’s permanent undersecretary, and Nigel Casey, the PM’s special representative for Afghanistan, of having “intentionally lied” to MPs on the foreign affairs select committee.

Appearing before the committee on January 25, Casey was asked if he knew whether the PM had intervened “in the evacuation of Nowzad staff or animals” and replied: “Not to my knowledge.”

In  written evidence to the committee, published the next day, Sir Philip denied that Mr Casey had received “any correspondence referring to the prime minister’s intervention in the Nowzad case”.

This was contradicted in leaked emails published by the committee subsequently.

Sir Philip had to write back to the committee, apologising for misleading its members.

But he insisted that he had no memory of the emails, and nor did Casey.

Johnson has denied direct involvement in the evacuation of animals.

But the email evidence suggests that, indeed, he ordered it – and then lied to the media afterwards, when it was suggested that he had prioritised animals over human beings.

Ms Stewart also dismissed government claims that civil servants often portrayed decisions as coming from the PM if they did not, saying, “Governance would fall apart entirely if this were the case.”

She said: “I feel a strong sense of moral injury for having been part of something so badly managed and so focused on managing reputational risk and political fallout rather than the actual crisis and associated human tragedy.”

Ms Stewart said the messages about the animal evacuation decision were coming from the PM on Microsoft Teams, and “heard it discussed in the crisis centre including by senior civil servants”.

She also said she was copied on numerous emails “which clearly suggested this” which no-one, including Mr Casey, challenged.

Ms Stewart said she did not believe there was any deliberate decision “to prioritise animals over people” but that “the decision to approve Nowzad’s Afghan staff under LOTR (leave outside the rules) was not in line with policy”.

The whistleblower said “there was no reason to believe these people should be prioritised under the agreed criteria”.

The Foreign Office has claimed that “at all times officials have responded to the committee’s questions in good faith, on the basis of the evidence available to us at the time”, which is not quite a rejection of the evidence.

There is plenty of evidence to question that protestation of good faith.

Source: Boris Johnson ordered evacuation of animals from Afghanistan, says new whistleblower | The Independent

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https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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#ForeignOffice admits it was wrong to deny #BorisJohnson authorised Afghan animal evacuation

The Foreign Office has admitted misleading MPs over whether Boris Johnson authorised the evacuation of Pen Farthings dog rescue charity Nowzad from Afghanistan last year.

But you won’t realise that from looking at the BBC report!

Foreign Office boss admits error over Afghan animal evacuation reads as though Johnson had nothing to do with it.

And you have to read a long way into the story to discover that Sir Philip Barton, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, was saying that he had not seen emails sent within his department, indicating that Boris Johnson did indeed authorise the evacuation.

If he did, then he lied about it to the media afterwards, when it was suggested that he had prioritised animals over human beings.

People the UK abandoned in Afghanistan when the Taliban took over have since tried to reach this country via the refugee route – crossing the Channel – and this has led to at least one death.

Appearing before the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday, the prime minister’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Nigel Casey was asked if he knew whether the PM had intervened “in the evacuation of Nowzad staff or animals” and replied: “Not to my knowledge.”

In  written evidence to the committee, published on Wednesday, Sir Philip denied that Mr Casey had received “any correspondence referring to the prime minister’s intervention in the Nowzad case”.

This was contradicted in leaked emails published by the committee subsequently.

And BBC Newsnight’s Sima Kotecha has seen two emails with the subject heading “Pen Farthing and dogs”, showing the Foreign Office and Mr Casey sought guidance from No 10 over the issue.

So now Sir Philip has had to write back to the committee, apologising for misleading its members.

But he stuck to the part of the story covering his involvement:

“As Nigel said to the committee on [Tuesday] he has no recollection of having seen emails in which staff attributed this decision to the prime minister. Nor do I.”

Downing Street is saying that the decision may have been interpreted as coming from Johnson when that was not the case – but it has provided no evidence to support this claim.

So Labour’s Chris Bryant, a member of the committee, is well within his rights to say (as he did on BBC Breakfast News): “All I want to know is who made the decision?”

We all want to know that, Chris. At the moment it seems clear that Johnson has lied again and our civil servants are disgracing themselves in their haste to cover up for him.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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