David Craig, on November 27th, 2014Oh dear. Supposed ‘charity’ Save The Children is in the news again. And not for the right reasons. I did a piece on Save The Children just a few days ago. But given this charity’s latest blunder, it perhaps deserves another glowing mention.
Apparently Save The Children’s US branch has given some kind of humanitarian ‘Global Legacy Award’ to the (IMHO) repulsive, grasping, lying war criminal Tony Blair – the man who apparently lied to get Britain involved in the Iraq war and then threw our military into Afghanistan with no real plan of what to do once there and inadequate equipment which contributed to the deaths of over 450 troops and the maiming of thousands more.
So, why did Tony get this prestigious award? Could it be linked to the fact that the £168,653-a-year chief executive of Save The Children is one Justin Forsyth, formerly a special adviser to Blair for three years, and Jonathan Powell, Blair’s former chief of staff, is currently on the board of Save The Children? Of course, not. After all, in a statement Save The Children stressed that the award was given by the US arm of the charity, not by Save The Children UK or Forsyth. Ah, so it’s not a case of the ruling elites all looking after each other with our money.
In addition to this farcical award to the (IMHO) slimey, warmongering, megalomaniac Blair, here are just a few other reasons why we should all boycott the self-serving, snouts-in-the-trough Save The Children.
1. The salary bill for the 39 Save The Children managers earning £60,000 or more a year is a cool £3,113,000. Just to pay Save The Children’s managers would need 51,883 people contributing £5 a month by direct debit. In fact, you’d need 2,811 people giving £5 a month just to pay the salary of the Save The Children chief executive. Laughable!
2. Save The Children already gets around £150.7m (around half its income) directly from our taxes, whether we want to donate or not. So, you might wonder why we should be giving this charity/business any more cash when it already takes so much from us. When asking us to donate, Save The Children never seems to mention how much money we are already forced to give it.
3. Save The Children’s charity shops raised £8.496m while costing £6.758m, So, only 28p of every £1 taken by the shops was available for administration and charitable activities. This is in spite of the fact that most of what the shops sell is donated free, the shops are mainly staffed by unpaid volunteers and the charity doesn’t pay much if any rent on its shops. But then, I imagine Save The Children needs lots of levels of management to run its shops and managers cost money.
4. Save the Children pays an amazing £3.346m a year rent on its UK offices including its head office (I think in one of the most expensive parts of Central London) and another £4.576m on its offices around the world, many of them in some of the world’s poorest countries where rents should really be quite low. Assuming it costs say £10m or less to build a nondescript office block somewhere ghastly like Rochdale or Birmingham, then Save The Children may be paying enough in rent on its UK offices to build a new office block every three years! But hey, it’s only ordinary people’s money and I imagine the charity’s bosses prefer to be based in Central London. So, who cares how much of our money is wasted on Save The Children’s bosses’ comfort?
5. Save The Children’s top executives all had wonderful inflation-protected, final salary pensions. The pension scheme for Save The Children’s bosses had assets of £83.9m but liabilities of £117.5m meaning it had a deficit of £33.6m. However, Save The Children was paying in about £4.332m extra of our donations into this pension scheme each year to ensure its retired bosses and bosses yet to retire will never go hungry. You’d need 72,200 people paying £5 a month by direct debit just to make up the shortfall in the Save The Children’s bosses’ pension scheme!!!
6. Moreover, the growth projections for the Save The Children’s bosses’ pension fund are 7% per annum. Given that interest rates on most bonds are less than 2% and that average stock-market returns are less than 4%, we can be certain that the Save The Children’s bosses’ pension scheme shortfall will rise and ever more of our money, that should be spent saving children, will actually go into saving Save The Children’s bosses’ pensions
7. The charity was invoiced £584,394 (2011: £258,268) for advertising and creative services provided by Adam & Eve DDB during the year, one of whose directors is the brother of the charity’s Chief Executive
Still feel like donating to Save The Children a ‘charity’ run by the vile Tony’s chums possibly mainly for the benefit of vile Tony’s chums?
And if you know anyone who might be tempted into donating to Save The Children, perhaps you could send them a link to today’s blog?
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The principle charge against the Nazi leaders at Nuremburg was planing and wagging a war of aggression . This is what Blair should be charged with http://www.arrestblair.org he got us into those wars knowing he would be rewarded by the Americans. He also set up the Human Rights act so the law firm his wife works for http://www.matrixlaw.co.uk could make millions from it.
At the time of the Iraq war his daughter Kathryn was so distresed by it she attempted suicide. Murdochs Sun killed this story but used it for leverage on Blair.
I used to give £15 a month to Cancer Research. They phoned me and asked if I would like to raise it to £18 a month which I agreed. They then proceeded to take £33 a month! Needless to say I cancelled the donations and have never given to charity since. From what you say and others agree, most charities are run for the benefit of those at the top of the organisations and not for the cause. It’s time the politicians put a cap on theirs earnings, like the bankers’ bonuses. I won’t hold my breath.