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So, this Kid’s Company

One of the staff told me to return the following Friday if I wanted to see what was really going on. This time I found about 20 young people having lunch. When I asked some why they came, they looked surprised: “For the money of course.” It certainly was not for the education or Pilates. As I saw for myself, staff handed out envelops of cash ranging from £50 to £200 – a serious amount to a young person receiving roughly £50 a week from the state. According to staff and kids, this happened every Friday.
This financial allowance appeared to be the key to the popularity of the centre. One member of staff said: “You don’t see most of the kids coming any other day.” One girl told me: “I come on Friday lunch times to socialise, pick up my allowance and then I go.” Outside I saw four or five cars queuing up. Young people jumped out and ran into the centre. They returned a few moments later, waving their envelopes in the air and grinning. Then they got back into the car and were driven away. Two girls sent by the Prince’s Trust for a week’s course described how, when one young man turned up furious that his allowance had been cut, he threatened staff, shouted abuse, then snatched up a fire extinguisher and threw it into the office where the woman who handed out the cash crouched, terrified.
Batmanghelidjh has defended the practice of giving out money in this way. “Middle-class parents give their children pocket money,” she has said. “Why does it become a problem when it’s a poor child that’s being given money?” But one staff member pointed out to me that charities are judged by the number of people using them. Handing out cash achieves a high body count.

Hmm.

15 thoughts on “So, this Kid’s Company”

  1. Bloke in Costa Rica

    It may be unfair, but I can’t help thinking that anyone who dresses like that must be a colossal fraud. It just screams misdirection.

  2. This sums up the Progressive approach – get State money, give it away, that’s it. Job done. Caring.

    Oh, and Pilates. That’ll get the young crack addicts off the street. Pilates.

  3. Yes, that woman has long raised my hackles. I’ve never met her, and I’m willing to bet she’s utterly charming, but visually she’s a too exquisite definition of what IanB has taught me to call a ‘society matron’. Let’s hope this thing with the bribing ‘clients’ is mere niaivete. OTOH, Kids’ Company seems to be dispensing serious sums of cash. It does sound like this story, and the Speccie item Machiavelli refers to, are the tip of the journalistic iceberg.

  4. Do middle-class kids get £50-£200 a week pocket money these days?

    Can members of the middle-class on here comment?

  5. So Much for Subtlety

    Mr Ecks – “Do middle-class kids get £50-£200 a week pocket money these days?”

    Only the ones not selling their bodies over the internet. How do they afford their smack habits otherwise?

    All newspapers – from the Daily Mail to the Guardian – seem agreed that this is true

  6. So Much for Subtlety

    A charity gone wrong. And not just any charity.

    I can’t wait for Ironman to turn up and tell everyone here that they are all racists for privileging a White middle class woman’s “opinions” over the word of an oppressed member of the diverse and vibrant communities of modern Britain.

    I am feeling somewhat ashamed of myself already.

  7. Ms. Batmanthingy is just another progressive sneering at the ‘middle class’.

    As with other Leftards who assume the relative success of the middle classes is all about money, they can’t see that, in truth, most of it is about values and attitudes. Attitudes that don’t include suitting on your fat arse waiting for someone to give other people’s money to you. (I actually think that the traditional working and middle classes are not so different in this respect.)

  8. I used to send a little money Kid’s Company’s way.

    Then I changed bank account and tried to move the direct debit, and discovered that Kid’s Company didn’t answer emails, had no sign of having a front office, and the person answering the most prominent head-office number on their Web site had extremely limited English and did not know what a direct debit was.

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