ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Markintime

Forget it or change club loyalties.

I went for the England Operations Manager job (essentially something a good SO2 Mov could do) but was turned down. I expect they thought I would be some kind of fifth columnist when I revealed I supported Irish.

Hell I think they would think anyone who wasn't a Hairyquim was some kind of dangerous outsider

Bit of a grey area, organizations with charitable status are often simply businesses given political protection e.g. independent schools or political lobbying organizations e.g. Atlantic Bridge even many essential religious organizations that most folk would recognize as being engaged in charity often have a highly political agenda and this has always been so.

In the hyper-charitable US this has been particularly true of the Evangelical (both black and white) and Mormon churches who spawn charitable, oddly profitable ventures at a great rate and are often cosseted by government, voucher based schooling being one of the more lucrative rackets they've come up with recently. In the UK we might think of our own dear Mr Tony, the peoples Middle East Envoy For Peace, doing good works for the Lord while bringing the Good News of JP Morgan God like abilities to generous punters and vicious despots across the ME.

As such charity overlaps the spheres of both commerce and politics. Much of politics involves spreading around the public pork, often to needy folk like BAE or occasionally to socially useful private enterprise but also other causes favored by our political parties and there are even some very deserving examples (I'm told but don't ask me what) that would not be viable without such assistance.

Corporations do a very similar thing with their shareholders money and that's often essentially political as well, the assault on global cooling denial would never have got legs without the good work of Exxon Mobil. Should such largesse really be limited mostly to slightly barmy rich old bints with too much money and obsession with cruelty to donkeys?

I think it's rather naive to assume that an awful lot of charities won't often simply be an expensively administered wing of government or for that matter corporations, that's basically what the Big Society is and in a fundamentally uncharitable society like the UK it will shrink to something very small if you try to take politics out of it.

I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that that all charities should be funded entirely by the public. Some are exclusively funded by the taxpaper, e.g. the local housing association that runs what used to be the council houses.

However I think the gist of the OPs point was that primarily taxpayer funded charities are being used by govt to promote policies under the guise of independent thinking.

I'd be more than happy for the media reports that this charity or whatever has produced a report recommending this or that, to be supplemented with the info that said charity is majority funded by govt/big business/mad mullahs/whoever

Originally Posted by mush_dad

I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that that all charities should be funded entirely by the public. Some are exclusively funded by the taxpaper, e.g. the local housing association that runs what used to be the council houses.

Now that is, IMHO, a scam!

Originally Posted by mush_dad

I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that that all charities should be funded entirely by the public. Some are exclusively funded by the taxpaper, e.g. the local housing association that runs what used to be the council houses.

I'd ban that too. Free market renting with a few Rachmanesque landlords will encourage les autres to stop acting like savages in chav estates.

Originally Posted by CaptainPlume

Now that is, IMHO, a scam!

How dare you insinuate that Prescott junior had insider knowledge and a preferred status enabling him to be able to make a killing from the selling off of Hull City Council housing stock.

My man will be round to discuss weapons and venue.

i'm suprised that Fake Charities hasn't been mentioned yet .

charity funding and operational models is allways an interesting one.

It's already been said that Charity status is just another wrapper for a business , although many people like to cast aspirations towards charities that have a company registration as this is somehow 'not charitable' - when in fact all this is doing is protecting trustees from being treated as partners should anything go financially wrong .

another thing which seems to upset people is the employment of paid staff by charities as if this is somehow 'wrong'

then there's charities charging for services , again people forgetting that charities are bound by their articles of association and charitable objectives stated to the charity commissioners - which means that trading with another charity should be at cost, unless your charity has a specific aim of raising funds / acquiring resources for other charities ( e.g. where the likes of Rotary, Lions, The Variety Club, Lord's Taverners, Some of the Masonic charities- raise money to either donate to other charities or to buy stuff for the use of the other charities ) and that trading with a for profit business needs to be at least at cost if not surplus generating .

None of this is new. Private companies do the same in order to try and generate public debate and pressure to achieve political objectives.

It is just another mechanism of social control so beloved of market liberals. They are no different in this regard to communists.