National Trust under scrutiny

[oldnotbold]

To be honest, I'm okay with an executive of a given calibre getting a commensurate rate.

An example is my brother's former boss, who started his business in his parents' attic and retired a multi-millionaire (with emphasis on the 'multi').

He's precisely the sort of person that government should be bringing in at the top of the civil service - and when people complain that he's on a huge salary, point to the 'millions but he generates billions' reality.

Contrast that with the sell-offs of public utilities a few decades back, when anonymous civil servants were suddenly on huge salaries "because that's the market rate for someone of that seniority" - yes, the market rate for a successful individual with a proven track record.

Not everyone can afford to be altruistic. Were I financially comfortable enough to run a charity free, I probably would. The reality is that I have bills to pay, and I don't see why if I work hard - really hard - my only reward is a tiny flat above a chip shop.

As ever, it's about balance. Reward should match effort and I don't see an issue with that just because it's in a charity environment.

Just don't kick the árse out of it. For instance, I stopped supporting H4H when I saw how much the people at the top had unilaterally decided to pay themselves. Yes, the organisation was making money hand over fist and the people who originated it had a good idea, but...

...

The bit that's gripping me as much at the moment is the politicisation. The seemingly unilateral decisions from the top that organisations have to get Woke. The National Trust has a remit, and the current chief is stretching interpretation of that to the limit... which is a polite way of saying I feel that he's taking the píss. @Truxx nails it in the post you're responding to: it's become too much about egos.

The Charities Commission site is instructive...

Employee salaries over £60,000

	Number of employees
£60k to £70k	8
£70k to £80k	3
£80k to £90k	3
£90k to £100k	3
£100k to £110k	2
£120k to £130k	1

 

[Cold_Collation]

The Charities Commission site is instructive...

Employee salaries over £60,000

	Number of employees
£60k to £70k	8
£70k to £80k	3
£80k to £90k	3
£90k to £100k	3
£100k to £110k	2
£120k to £130k	1

Yes, but I live in the south-east - an area where a combined household salary of £100k is pretty much necessary to be able to afford a modest house and not be constantly living on credit cards.

There's a lot of responsibility involved in running an organisation - and especially one which purports to have a moral standpoint. I don't see £60-70k as 'a lot'.

£120-130 isn't either, as the sole breadwinner in certain parts of the world.

And around and around we go...

 

[RBMK]

Article in full:

The National Trust’s job is to conserve our history – not vilify its heroes
Wordsworth, Kipling and Churchill are being subjected to 2020’s lens. What gives an elite minority the right to traduce our past?

SIMON HEFFER
24 October 2020 • 9:36am
Simon Heffer

It has seemed for some years as though the National Trust has a death wish, as it dumbs down its properties and uses them more and more for publicity-seeking stunts. The fact that it has compiled a dossier of properties linked to “colonialism and slavery” appears to confirm my fear.

Apparently, the Trust’s “experts” – few of whom, on the basis of what this says about their expertise, would deserve even the lowest class of history degree from the worst imaginable university – say that around a third of its properties are associated with the “sometimes-uncomfortable role that Britain, and Britons, have played in global history”.

Yes, the good old National Trust – once the haven of well-preserved stately homes, woodland walks, and tea, jam and scones – is now determined to become part of that noisy elite minority that can’t let a day go by without engaging in an act of self-flagellation, and reminding us what a shocking country, and people, we supposedly are.


The Trust seems not to understand that its role is to conserve our historic houses, artefacts and landscapes: it is not the administrator of some nationwide re-education programme. The “list of shame” about slavery and colonialism is a typical example of the ignorance of those in charge. First, there seems to be some confusion of the two terms. Most British colonies, and almost all of those in Africa, were established after slavery was abolished. Once definitions of iniquity become so loose, it is easy to shovel the reputations of almost any historical figure you like into them.

So visitors to Bateman’s, Rudyard Kipling’s house in Sussex, will need to brace themselves for a description of the wickedness of the man who gave us the phrase “the White Man’s Burden”. One would never have thought that a man who was the most popular writer of his age, revered by millions in this country and around the world – and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature – would have to be placed at a bargepole’s length from the present generation.

Even less predictably, those visiting one of Wordsworth’s houses in the Lake District – the poet who wrote, of the French Revolution, “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!” – must also vicariously repent. William’s younger brother, John, once worked for the East India Company, an organisation with whom local Indian princes happily and profitably traded.

But, inevitably, the focus of the outrage has been Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s country house in north Kent. Churchill, whose minor achievement of managing our victory in the Second World War seems to count for nothing today, is condemned because while he was trying to stop Hitler’s programme of genocide and near-apocalyptic destruction, he failed to respond adequately to the Bengal famine.

The latter was no laughing matter – it is estimated that between two and three million Indians died in it, either of starvation or of diseases caused by it. A debate has continued ever since about how far the disaster was man-made and how far an act of God; Bengal, now Bangladesh, had been hit by a cyclone, flooding and rice-crop disease. There being a war on, there was a severe shortage of shipping when it came to sending aid. To blame Churchill – whose political record in other respects was patchy, to say the least – is not so much harsh as ridiculous.

Sir Winston is also attacked by the Trust for opposing Indian independence. Well, so did almost every leading British politician from 1858, when the British government took over running India from the East India Company, until the Second World War. God knows what the Trust are going to do about Disraeli, whose Buckinghamshire house, Hughenden Manor, is another of their properties: he was so enthusiastic about British rule in India that he arranged for Queen Victoria to become Empress of it.

The Trust says it wants to present its visitors with “very painful” histories. Why? Since when was it the function of this conservation group to vilify so many of our historical figures, people who – when not engaging in acts of racial, sexual and gender oppression – were helping to forge a democracy that set an example followed around the civilised world?

For too long, the Trust has treated its core clientele – middle-aged and elderly people – with near-contempt. Too many of their properties have been made what they call “accessible” – made into, effectively, children’s play centres, offering a potted version of Leftist history that is either sanitised or propagandistic.

But the real stupidity of the Trust lies not in its allowing a highly questionable view of history to colour its presentation of its properties. It lies in digging its own grave even more deeply at a time when it is having to sack 1,200 of its 14,000 staff because of the Covid-19 crisis, and when partly because of that, but also partly because of its sod-the-public attitude, people have been staying away from its properties in droves. Hilary McGrady, the Trust’s director-general, needs to get a grip, lest her whole enterprise haemorrhage its core membership and head towards insolvency.

This is the worst possible time for the Trust to start behaving in this aggressively irrelevant fashion. It could well provoke thousands of members to resign, and volunteers to go with them, because they will not be indoctrinated in this fashion, or told to loathe their country as some form of penance.

It ought also to provoke an investigation by the Charities Commission about the Trust’s political activities. On the front page of its website, it boasts that it carries out its founders’ wishes “to care for nature, beauty and history”. Well, it shows a pitiful care for history to distort it as the fanatics who are now in control seem determined to do.

“The values of our founders are still at the heart of everything we do,” the official preening continues. Oh really? One thing that can be said with certainty about the founders is that they started the Trust because they loved and wished to preserve Britain’s past – not to use it as the basis for an object lesson in self-hatred.

Whilst I agree with the above, Heffer is, and has always been, a bit ofa cvnt:

Excerpt from his comments on Hillsborough:

The extreme reaction to Mr Bigley's murder is fed by the fact that he was a Liverpudlian. Liverpool is a handsome city with a tribal sense of community. ... An excessive predilection for welfarism have created a peculiar, and deeply unattractive, psyche among many Liverpudlians. They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it. ... They cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance against the rest of society. The deaths of more than 50 Liverpool football supporters at Hillsborough in 1989 was undeniably a greater tragedy than the single death, however horrible, of Mr Bigley; but that is no excuse for Liverpool's failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon. The police became a convenient scapegoat, and The Sun newspaper a whipping-boy for daring, albeit in a tasteless fashion, to hint at the wider causes of the incident.[13]

 

[Mary Hinge]

 

[Roger Out]

I rejoined in January with the intention of making good use of my membership.
Then covid kicked off, and we have a newborn.
I won’t be rejoining this year this year , I’ll leave it for a couple of years until I can make use of my membership.

 

[Deleted 136127]

We were down in Dorset on the coast last week and a lot of the beaches were managed as National Trust sites. The National Trust employees all seem like good eggs - being Dorset it was mostly people in their 50s working in cafes or doing bit of what looked like voluntary work. I'd say we have a massive disconnect by the politically correct brigade who now running NT, the workforce and the people who are members. Hopefully it wont end well for the people now running NT

 

[Cold_Collation]

We were down in Dorset on the coast last week and a lot of the beaches were managed as National Trust sites. The National Trust employees all seem like good eggs - being Dorset it was mostly people in their 50s working in cafes or doing bit of what looked like voluntary work. I'd say we have a massive disconnect by the politically correct brigade who now running NT, the workforce and the people who are members. Hopefully it wont end well for the people now running NT

I think your comments echo what's happening in many organisations and institutions.

SWMBO made a comment this morning which was bang on the nose.

Every organisation at the moment seems to be rushing to do at least something. As she said, a token effort for fear of not being seen to be on board.

Token is a very small step from tokenism, and that is a very bad place to be. Like, a 30-50 years ago place to be. It's not progress.

The sad part of this is, for the 'tokens', if I may put it like that, it's also a bad place to be. Take the new presenter of A Question of Sport, for instance. Had it been Alex Scott, many people would only have seen her colour because at the moment we're being battered with colour. She'd have ended up in a position where her credibility was shot before she even started.

That's not progress.

Take the army; the individuals within, including the BAME individuals, just get on with stuff. I can't see that the BAME guys (other gender-something descriptions are available) are chuffed to be constantly shoved to the front in PR photos.

PC for whatever reasons is running riot at the moment and the government's eye** is really off the ball*.




*Other objects are available. 'Ball' should not be taken to be representative of outdated patriarchal construct.

**Eye should not be taken to exclude those who are sensory impaired.

 

[Ian525]

We were down in Dorset on the coast last week and a lot of the beaches were managed as National Trust sites. The National Trust employees all seem like good eggs - being Dorset it was mostly people in their 50s working in cafes or doing bit of what looked like voluntary work. I'd say we have a massive disconnect by the politically correct brigade who now running NT, the workforce and the people who are members. Hopefully it wont end well for the people now running NT

Couldn't agree more. The volunteers and conservators are great. The upper management are toxic.

 

[Deleted 136127]

I think your comments echo what's happening in many organisations and institutions.

SWMBO made a comment this morning which was bang on the nose.

Every organisation at the moment seems to be rushing to do at least something. As she said, a token effort for fear of not being seen to be on board.

Token is a very small step from tokenism, and that is a very bad place to be. Like, a 30-50 years ago place to be. It's not progress.

The sad part of this is, for the 'tokens', if I may put it like that, it's also a bad place to be. Take the new presenter of A Question of Sport, for instance. Has it been Alex Scott, many people would only have seen her colour because at the moment we're being battered with colour. She'd have ended up in a position where her credibility was shot before she even started.

That's not progress.

Take the army; the individuals within, including the BAME individuals, just get on with stuff. I can't see that the BAME guys (other gender-something descriptions are available) are chuffed to be constantly shoved to the front in PR photos.

PC for whatever reasons is running riot at the moment and the government's eye** is really off the ball*.




*Other objects are available. 'Ball' should not be taken to be representative of outdated patriarchal construct.

**Eye should not be taken to exclude those who are sensory impaired.

I just got this through to my work email. Its full of woke b0ll0cks. I've just unsubscribed after reading the first paragraph and its tailed with more BLM b0ll0cks.

FFS

Sound of Victory
Friday, 6 November 2020​

Dear Simmerit,

Barring a Pastor Paula White-Cain induced miracle, Joe Biden will be the next President of America. Many US entrepreneurs seem to be on the verge of celebrating – particularly immigrant entrepreneurs – but a case can be made that UK entrepreneurs will also be better off with someone else in the White House. In fact, our Adviser Andrew Dixon does just that in a City AM debate:

“Over the last four years, time and time again, Trump has undermined global cooperation — in everything from pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Global Compact for Migration, to his sustained efforts to weaken the WTO and Nato. Trump’s populist “America First” approach to international relations has undermined the prospects for global trade — and directly impacted British businesses.

After the pandemic has been defeated, huge global challenges will remain — from the demographic (such as ageing western populations and rising regional and intergenerational inequality) to the technological (like the rise of artificial intelligence, automation, under-employment, the power of Big Tech and the appropriate antitrust response).”

A fair COP
On Monday we released Green Entrepreneurship with the Enterprise Trust. We launched it to coincide with when COP26 was supposed to take place in Glasgow, but we want it to influence the environmental policy agenda between now and next year's meeting.

Innovation has been key in the UK’s success over recent decades. As Business Secretary Alok Sharma explained this week: “Over the last 30 years, the UK economy grew by 75%, and yet we also cut our emissions by 43%. We were the first major economy to legislate for achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050.”

Despite positive action by multiple governments, the report argues that incentives still aren't aligned as well as they could be to spur entrepreneurs to innovate. I won’t go through all twenty recommendations, but one of my favourites is perhaps broadest and something we have argued for in the past: making the Annual Investment Allowance unlimited.

The Annual Investment Allowance allows businesses to write-off the costs of new plants and machinery, but currently those who exceed the limit have a reduced incentive to invest in energy efficiency. The report also suggests further thought could be given to broadening out the qualifying lists.

As I write in Forbes, Green Entrepreneurship also has some inspiring case studies of UK entrepreneurs whose innovations will help the environment. Businesses like Too Good To Go, the Uber for unwanted food; Electron, whose platform helps optimise the network capacity for renewable energy; Ryse Hydrogen, which is at the forefront of Britain’s green hydrogen industry; and Saturn Bioponics, which uses fewer resources by growing food vertically in 3D hydroponic towers.

If you want to find out more, we also have a couple of events to launch the report with Bim Afolami MP and Luke Pollard MP that you’re welcome to attend.

Green Entrepreneurship Conservative Party Launch – with Bim Afolami MP
19 November 2020
10am to 11am
Register
Bim Afolami is Member of Parliament for Hitchin and Harpenden. More speakers tbc.

Green Entrepreneurship Labour Launch – with Luke Pollard MP
2 December
11am to 12am
Register
Luke Pollard MP is Shadow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary. More speakers tbc.

Serious relief
UnLtd has asked us to share details of a new fund they have opened to support England’s social enterprises recover from COVID-19. Supported by Comic Relief and match-funded by DCMS, the £4.75 million Inclusive Recovery Fund will offer grants of £10,000 to £500,000 to social ventures across England who are creating a deep and lasting impact for the most vulnerable. Find out more here.

SVC2UK
Silicon Valley Comes to the UK (SVC2UK) is returning this year with a digital summit. It runs from Monday to Thursday next week, and I’ll be chairing an event on Tuesday.

Attendees will hear from leading US tech entrepreneurs alongside British innovators. Ecosystem leaders, investors and founders from across Southeast Asia, China and India’s tech hubs will also join the conversation for the first time.

Speakers include Michele Romanow (Clearbanc), Alex Scott (BBC/Sky and Arsenal), Michael Acton Smith (Calm), David Rosa (Neat) and Check Warner (Ada Ventures). You can register here.


Our Next Webinars

Wine Club
As mentioned last week, we've pivoted our Adviser Dinners into a Wine Club. We have George Freeman MP, Dr Alan Whitehead MP, Chi Onwurah MP and Nadhim Zahawi MP lined up. Advisers will get their invitations on Monday. You can find out more about becoming an Adviser here.

The Future of Visas and Immigration with Kevin Foster MP
24 November 2020
10am to 10.45 am
Free
Find out more
Hear from Kevin Foster MP, Minister for Future Borders and Immigration, and Nicolas Rollason, Head of Immigration at Kingsley Napley

Female Founders Forum – Cementing your Story
1 December 2020
10am to 11.30am
Free
Find out more
Exploring how to hone in on and adapt your business narrative during the Covid-19 outbreak.


News and Views

Furlough was extended and SEISS grants were boosted – read all the details in our latest policy update

Pressure grows to support excluded self-employed

More than £1.1bn worth of fraudulent Bounce Back Loans were rejected

“President Trump’s executive order restricting entry of temporary foreign workers to the United States negatively affected the valuation of 471 publicly traded Fortune 500 firms by an estimated $100 billion”

Extend VC’s diversity beyond gender report analyses the extent of the UK funding gap to understand if bias beyond gender exists in the UK venture capital market and what opportunities lie ahead to make access to innovation and entrepreneurship more equitable

Stuart Brown of Barclays talks to the Scotsman and mentions their work with the Female Founders Forum

Why Keir Starmer needs to crack Labour’s business problems

‘We haven’t received a penny’ – business interruption insurance row intensifies as owners fear payout delays

Covid has put VCs as well as entrepreneurs under pressure

A new report says we need better metrics for environmental impact to measure SME productivity

The startup trying to rebuild trust in voting with open source


Friends of the Network

WEBINARS

Amazon Bootcamp: West Midlands
17 November 2020
9am to 12.30pm
Free
Find out more
Bootcamp to help get you sell products online.

Don’t Start Looking, Startup!
20 November 2020
1pm to 2pm
Free
Find out more
A showcase of the Launchpad Competition: speak with previous winners, celebrate entrepreneurship and discuss why you too should stop searching and startup.

FounderFuel Live: How to crack team dynamics to perform in a small team
24 November 2020
1pm to 2.15pm
Free
Find out more
Join Laura Penhaul to explore what entrepreneurs can do to foster effective team dynamics.

PROGRAMMES

Innovating for Growth: Scale-ups
Deadline: 18 November 2020
Find out more
Free programme helping businesses to prepare for changes, capture opportunities and adapt with over £10,000 of bespoke support.

COMPETITIONS

Black Founders in Tech
Deadline: 8 November 2020
Competition: 25 November 2020
Prize: Accolade
Find out more
TechInvest event seeking to profile London's most innovative Black founders.

Take care,

Philip
Philip Salter
Founder, The Entrepreneurs Network

PS. Join Us!

 

[RBMK]

I'd reply to the above but I need to go and throw up first.

 

[Deleted 136127]

I'd reply to the above but I need to go and throw up first.

woke b0ll0cks is everywhere.

 

[sonofgreenfinch]

Interesting how "out of date" the figures are - National Trust 2012!

Wifey works for a small but international charity running all the support services. She's on OK money but not equivalent to commercial sector and she has turned don pay rises to use the money to bring her team up in pay. In her time there she has curtailed a lot of superfluous travel and expenses (domestic and foreign) by employees and rationalised services to manage costs down. Previous CEO had a company Audi usually driven by his wife. New CEO travels second class on the train. Wifey's team really do put in extra, especially now they are mostly working at home because they believe in what they are doing so work into the evening.

She knows exactly how much donated money goes in runnin the charity and a lot of the running cost is funded by rent from property donated or acquired in the early years of the charity so almost self funding.

Get her started on the funds retained and lack of transparency of big charities like Oxfam, RSPCA, RNLI, RBL and she goes full on agnry mode. They have huge funds, senior staff are very well paid and they give out funds to "pet projects" rather than individual causes. We give to local charities where we can see the transparency and where the money goes like the village hall run by volunteers etc.

Three generations of my family have run the local poppy collection.

I have now given up completely on the Royal British Legion – in my experience, it has become a faceless, uncommunicative, corporate bureaucracy.

 

[sonofgreenfinch]

To be honest, I'm okay with an executive of a given calibre getting a commensurate rate.

An example is my brother's former boss, who started his business in his parents' attic and retired a multi-millionaire (with emphasis on the 'multi').

He's precisely the sort of person that government should be bringing in at the top of the civil service - and when people complain that he's on a huge salary, point to the 'millions but he generates billions' reality.

Contrast that with the sell-offs of public utilities a few decades back, when anonymous civil servants were suddenly on huge salaries "because that's the market rate for someone of that seniority" - yes, the market rate for a successful individual with a proven track record.

Not everyone can afford to be altruistic. Were I financially comfortable enough to run a charity free, I probably would. The reality is that I have bills to pay, and I don't see why if I work hard - really hard - my only reward is a tiny flat above a chip shop.

As ever, it's about balance. Reward should match effort and I don't see an issue with that just because it's in a charity environment.

Just don't kick the árse out of it. For instance, I stopped supporting H4H when I saw how much the people at the top had unilaterally decided to pay themselves. Yes, the organisation was making money hand over fist and the people who originated it had a good idea, but...

...

The bit that's gripping me as much at the moment is the politicisation. The seemingly unilateral decisions from the top that organisations have to get Woke. The National Trust has a remit, and the current chief is stretching interpretation of that to the limit... which is a polite way of saying I feel that he's taking the píss. @Truxx nails it in the post you're responding to: it's become too much about egos.

I am glad you posted this.

A couple of months ago, I did a charity walk on behalf of a small organisation which helps the elderly (including some ex-Services people) in a far away land.

The founder of the charity, who is still the Chairman in his late 70s (he’s not slow to talk about his successful business and – briefly – political career) let slip that he “gets paid the same as an MP”.

I had assumed – in the several years I have been involved with it – that he donated his time, merely receiving expenses.

There is an audit committee, but several people close to him sit on it.

I am now hesitant about my future involvement and support.

 

[Cold_Collation]

I am glad you posted this.

You've left me wondering whether I've said the right thing or not.

 

[sonofgreenfinch]

You've left me wondering whether I've said the right thing or not.

Doesn’t it depend if the reward matches the effort?