Corpse-minder quits

 

We were worrying the corpse of the ‘Big Society’ this morning.

At the time we did not know that the corpse-minder in Chief Lord Wei was about to flee the grisly scene. We had asked him to appear before us. I hope we did not frighten him off.  Cameron re-launched the Big Society for the fourth time yesterday. Anyone notice? It’s cruel. Someone should tell him his dead parrot is beyond resurrection.

But our Tory-led committee soldiers on. We had a diverse cast of witnesses. There was Blue Labour, Red Tory, Polly Toynbee and one of Cameron’s Ambassadors for the Big Society.

The Ambassador should refine his diplomatic skills. A failed Tory Election candidate, he patronised and irritated the committee. He explained (twice) that MPs breathe different oxygen to him and need to be told about life. He explained to me that there are things called ‘councils’ that could be useful. I thanked him and explained I did not really need to know this as I had served on councils for 20 years.

I asked Ambassador Bailey if he wants Big Society charities to model themselves on his charity. He said 'no'.  All hell broke loose when I attempted to ask about the alleged high publicity budget of his charity that allegedly coincided with his parliamentary campaign. Tory MP Robert Halfon went apocalyptic and objected to these perfectly fair questions. Mr Bailey said these were stories put about by a Labour candidate.

That was not my source. I found them in the Times and in other news sources. I asked him whether his charity had been investigated by the Charity Commission. More Hullabaloo from Halfon. Bailey said, and repeated, that his charity had not been investigated.

The Times on April 17 2010 reported on his charity My Generation, 'The independent examiner said that the charity’s accounts showed that £15,952 worth of payments were made out of a budget of 201,859 “without any supporting records".'

The report continues, “The Charity Commission confirmed that it was looking at the discrepancy in the account.” I cannot find any up-to-date news on this, but I am sure it is all right. It must be. Mr Bailey said so.

Comments

[D.G.]

"He explained (twice) that MPs breathe different oxygen to him and need to be told about life."

He shouldn't make generalisations, but to be fair, that's certainly true of some MPs. I still remember Mr Pickles explaining that, unlike everyone else in Britain, it's absolutely vital that he gets to his desk at 9am sharp

[HuwOS]

Just when you think hypocrisy has reached maximum our government just digs down deep and outdoes anything that went before.

We have it with Libya, with the "big society" and just about everything else they come out with. Still, at least we're all in it together.

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'darn it if we just keep on trying we can successfully murder this guy even if we have to murder many other Libyans to do it.'

Stupidest adventure so far in terms of fumbled justification and not having a clue and only creating counter-productive outcomes, since er the other disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. Counter-productive to the stated aims that is.

[HuwOS]

typo: here should have been hear

[HuwOS]

Well he is right (according to wikipedia anyway) because The Charity Commission stated in April that they were looking into the discrepancies and had yet to decide whether to place My Generation "under investigation" under the powers granted to them by Section 8 of the Charities Act 1993 to investigate malfeasance.

So his charity has not been investigated yet.
If I were him I would have considered it important once anything looks a little odd to insist upon an investigation to put any doubts to rest. But for some reason politicians tend not to go with my kind of thinking.

Which is presumably why we here very little peeping about our participation in the ongoing bombing of Libyans in our efforts to save them from their brutal leader who just happens to be someone we or our allies have tried to murder many times before, unluckily we've only manged to slaughter others so far but darn it if we just keep on trying we can successfully murder this guy even if we have to murder many other Libyans to do it.