Wednesday 5th August 2015

[Tubby Isaacs]

Anyone interesting in some of the reports that Kids Company have online?

http://www.kidsco.org.uk/about-us/annual-accounts" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Includes a report by the IDS- founded Centre for Social Justice only last year.

I looked at the 2013 accounts - support from government amounts to £4.7m out of a total income of £23.1m so it's not as if there was no other money coming in.

IMO There needs to be a full investigation of what was going on - including in government about what concerns the DfE had and if they were followed up - if not then why not.

Looking quickly as the IDS think tank report. Looks like "this charity do great things, not like those bad LAs".

Yes, that's the impression I got too - the fallout from this might be quite embarrassing.

Quite what Tim Loughton thought he was doing by waiting three years and then piping up "Oh, we had doubts" - h'e not usually so reticent in giving his opinion. Unless he got told to keep quiet from on high.

Blah blah Reverend Flowers.

[Tubby Isaacs]

FT:

But the prime minister’s involvement in the charity was under scrutiny on Wednesday after Dominic Cummings, a former adviser to Michael Gove, told Channel 4 the prime minister intervened personally to ensure funding for Kids Company, despite advice from officials and Mr Gove the funding should stop.

Gove will deny this, the papers will be FOIAed, the FOIA will be refused.

[howsillyofme1]

Jeremy Corbyn is very few people's idea of an ideal Labour leader but to be honest neither are the other three. It seems Burnham has started to become aware of this and is reacting to the message that the Labour party does not want more of the same aping of the Conservative position on the economy and want to see a robust defence of the public services and the less fortunate in the country

If the outcome of the leadership election is a new direction for the party and a passionate and confrontational approach to the lies peddled by the Tories and their media pals then great. If it is only Corbyn that offers this then I hope he wins; if one of the others (and at the moment that would be Burnham) then that is fine and we should welcome that. Cooper has seemingly gone quiet and Kendall seems to have given up......

What cannot happen is a passionless managerial approach to the Tories focusing on triangulation and trying to pander to all the prejudices and misunderstandings of the general population - get out there and point out the truths. Get the economists out there in the studios pointing out the stupidity of the austerity only approach and the facts that the crash was based on the laissez-faire attitude to the banks that a true Labour Government should never have allowed. Also try to educate them about the difference between a household budget and a country's budget.

Poke a few wasps nests and go head on with the media......point out who owns the media in this country and get them to be on the defensive like Ed managed to do in the early part of the last Parliament - in some ways his problem was the Blair links to the Murdoch empire that blunted his attacks somewhat and the cravenness of the Lib Dems. Defend the BBC as an institution and make a case for them, despite their role in peddling mistruths......make it the BBC vs Murdoch/Rothermere/Porno Desmond and see how well the Tories fare when defending their pals in the press. We need aggression and attack rather than being patsies

Reach out to other parties as well, the social liberal wing of the Lib Dems who seem to still have problems getting rid of the people who destroyed their party - head over to LDV to see some examples of what I am talking about. The SNP should be taken on head-on as well. There is nothing much left to lose but there is an argument for a union built on socialist principles as well as a separatist one.

As a controversial point about Blair - for all his positive things he did - I still believe he took us into an illegal war and he lied about the reasons for it - not because he is a warmonger but because of some infatuation with American power. If what he did was illegal then he should face the consequences. It won't happen but pointing out this is not necessarily anti-Labour. A lot of votes were still lost due to to Iraq - it was an inexcusable thing to do, both for the why and the how, and the consequences ares still being felt across the Middle-East. He should hold his head in shame and slide away into obscurity as Bush has done - he has no legacy because of this one act and the less we see of him the better for the party

As for Rentoul - the guy is a complete fud and is one of the dying, but still noisy, breed of 'Blairites'.

edited to change Turnham (who he?) back to Turnham

[Tubby Isaacs]

Corbyn's not my thing, but he's been very unfairly chucked in with "loony left" (for want of a better expression). I'm reading Michael Crick's old book about Militant, who were a sectarian cult, who used to oppose stuff they basically agreed with because people proposing it didn't share their class analysis.

Corbyn's always been a constructive leftist, and he's reaping the benefits now.

[SpinningHugo]

John Rentoul ‏@JohnRentoul 4m4 minutes ago
Depressing that it should need saying that Corbyn is not fit to be a Labour MP let alone a leadership candidate http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/com ... 41053.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

This slur on slur rhetoric isn't going to get us anywhere ... that's what is depressing. 'Not fit to be a Labour MP'. Surely his constituents are the judges of that?

Calling into question Corbyns fitness to be a Labour MP is libel.

I am not commenting on the merits. But, on the legal issues.

(i) There is no basis whatsoever for calling Blair a war criminal under either UK domestic law or international criminal law. The UK's invasion of Iraq was, in my view, unlawful, and I marched against it. Those calling Blair a criminal on this basis just reveal their stupidity.

(ii) Saying "X is unfit to be an MP" is fair comment. No possible libel.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Also per FT:

The government was under fire for releasing the funding in the first place after it emerged that civil servants had raised concerns but were overruled.
Cabinet Office chief Oliver Letwin and civil service minister Matthew Hancock told mandarins to release funds, citing the “inspirational work that Kids Company does” and the change in management as part of the deal. The charity closed just days later.

The organisation has been given an estimated £32m in funding from the government since 2008 but also relies on wealthy donors to pay for its work with youngsters in London, Bristol and Liverpool.

That's one heck of a lot.

The Spectator say they failed to pay £589k of payroll taxes in 2002, but had it written off.

[RogerOThornhill]

Anything that gets Letwin and Hancock squirming is good news...

They should have insisted that a Treasury official take a look at the books before releasing the cash.

Sounds like the 3rd party funds dried up when the accusations started flying around a few months back. Downward spiral since then.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah.

You can sort of see why Camilla B thinks they were brought down by gossiping civil servants. Obviously, they weren't solid, but they'd pulled through before and might have done again.

[RogerOThornhill]

Jonathan Simons
‏@PXEducation
There are hundreds of thousands of teachers, parents, governors in Academies doing good work day in day out who don't care about politics.


" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Of course there are.

But maybe you ought to have a word with your ex-mates in the DfE and tell them not to be so ideologically dogmatic about academies insisting that they are the only solution to every problem.

They are the ones who are the problem. No-one really gave a toss about academies pre-2010 when there was only about 200 of them.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Could be some squirming in Inner London councils:

One former staff member said: “Social services were sending us additional work because they couldn’t cope.

“The needs of the children went beyond what most people are happy to hear about. What amazed me was that young people living within a short radius of Buckingham Palace were living in conditions which the public would associate with the far off distant past.”

Kids Company must have looked like the answer to their funding prayers.

[TechnicalEphemera]

This slur on slur rhetoric isn't going to get us anywhere ... that's what is depressing. 'Not fit to be a Labour MP'. Surely his constituents are the judges of that?

Calling into question Corbyns fitness to be a Labour MP is libel.

I am not commenting on the merits. But, on the legal issues.

(i) There is no basis whatsoever for calling Blair a war criminal under either UK domestic law or international criminal law. The UK's invasion of Iraq was, in my view, unlawful, and I marched against it. Those calling Blair a criminal on this basis just reveal their stupidity.

(ii) Saying "X is unfit to be an MP" is fair comment. No possible libel.

If you say X is unfit to be an MP I don't see how that is fair comment. If you said I wasn't fit to be an engineer in a public forum I think I would seek redress.

I agree on Blair not being a war criminal, he has however chosen not to contest this slur in the courts. However were he to have done so he would almost certainly have won.

[SpinningHugo]

Calling into question Corbyns fitness to be a Labour MP is libel.

I am not commenting on the merits. But, on the legal issues.

(i) There is no basis whatsoever for calling Blair a war criminal under either UK domestic law or international criminal law. The UK's invasion of Iraq was, in my view, unlawful, and I marched against it. Those calling Blair a criminal on this basis just reveal their stupidity.

(ii) Saying "X is unfit to be an MP" is fair comment. No possible libel.

If you say X is unfit to be an MP I don't see how that is fair comment. If you said I wasn't fit to be an engineer in a public forum I think I would seek redress.

I agree on Blair not being a war criminal, he has however chosen not to contest this slur in the courts. However were he to have done so he would almost certainly have won.

Here the basis for the comment is expressed (Corbyn's statement that Blair could be tried for war crimes). It is strongly expressed, but clearly honestly held.

This seems to me to fairly express the law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_comm ... ed_Kingdom" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It is, of course, interesting that some people think that Rentoul's statement that Corbyn is unfit to be an MP is an outrageous libel, whilst Corbyn's statement that Blair could be tried for war crimes goes without comment.