Skip to content

Numbers are interesting things, aren’t they?

This newspaper reported that the government was also making efforts to support the 6,000 most in need. But, said Batmanghelidjh, many of them had been referred to her by already pressed local authorities, raising questions about who would take them on.

“They are very traumatised kids who have been raped, attacked and have no relatives. It is not a question of a child protection intervention, then they are OK,” said a tearful Batmanghelidjh, who put their number in the thousands.

So the UK contains 6,000 raped orphans, does it?

I wouldn’t say that’s a number I believed somehow.

According to Batmanghelidjh, the charity was closed so the trustees did not become personally liable for its debts.

Gosh, now who was it who said that might be a reason?

36 thoughts on “Numbers are interesting things, aren’t they?”

  1. Typical NGO / ‘charity’ made up figures to keep the snouts in the trough. Having read the letters in the speccie from some of the workers, they only saw the kids once a week when the free dosh was being handed out, which accounts for all the fictional phantom lunches they say they were feeding the poor mites every day.

  2. The UK contains as many raped orphans as are needed to fit the narrative. That’s how it works, right?

  3. I sneeze in threes

    Did you take a look at their last audited accounts on their website (will be also on Charity Commossion site).

    £1.56 million of deferred income increase YoY by £1.2m, £90k of cash, debtors £5.1m up from £2.9m.

    No way was this ever going to end well.

  4. It would make an interesting morality play.

    Swindling the taxpayer out of £44 million over the last decade, conspiracy by Yentob and Batman to ensure the taxpayer is denied £700,000 in PAYE deductions, grossly exaggerating its care for children, run so badly that £3 million just about squares things away and the payment personally ordered by D Cameron.

    The charity ultimately fails the children in its care in order to protect the personal finances of the trustees. A very lefty way of “giving”. Use somebody elses’ money, but shit a brick if it looks like any of your own might go down the tubes.

    All this, together with claims of child abuse, to be swept quietly under the carpet.

    Mrs Batman will presumably figure in some quango in a few months time, to resume the £90,000 plus expenses lifestyle to which she has become accustomed.

    This is why Dick the Prick thinks the Curajus State is so good. You can be a prize wanker and piss loads of money up against the wall, but still earn a nice few bob for yourself, with no comebacks.

  5. That’s 6000 raped orphans who are both under 18 and not in care, presumably. Where are they all? Surely the job of Kids Co (or anyone else) would be to get social services involved, not hand out pocket/drug money?

  6. ‘Deferred Income’? A charity has deferred income?

    If this had been a commercial enterprise the LHTD would have been screaming blue murder (after another blogger had explained what it all means, republished with or maybe without kind permission). But since it’s a NGO accounting standards can go the same way as transparency and accountability of government to taxpayers.

  7. many of them had been referred to her by already pressed local authorities
    If by ‘have no relatives’ she means in state care homes, maybe she’s talking about Rotherham and the 20 other child rape towns?

  8. Other numbers: 650 paid staff, £800k pm wage bill. For a “charity” that only operates in London and Bristol.

  9. There’s a figure missing here: the number of hours spent with each child. If there are 6,000 children in KidsCo’s care, and each is seen for just ten minutes a week (Friday’s cash handout), then the closure of KidsCo won’t make any difference.

    The kind of charity that does make a difference is one which keeps them occupied for several hours each day. At the very least it keeps them off the streets. There’s scant evidence that KidsCo was providing this level of support.

  10. There’s gratitude for you. Have money hosed on you by the PM, fail to manage your accounts (which says little of your ability to manage the kids) and then when it implodes point out that it’s fundamentally a ‘care in the community’ budgetary dodge.

    She’s not making friends, is she?

  11. “According to Batmanghelidjh, the charity was closed so the trustees did not become personally liable for its debts.”

    Must have been like Hanoi last night in the Kid’s Company offices. Though she’d need a bloody big heli to take her off the roof…

  12. “Must have been like Hanoi last night”.
    Saigon. Or Ho Chi Minh city as we are meant to call it now.

  13. AndrewM:“The kind of charity that does make a difference is one which keeps them occupied for several hours each day. At the very least it keeps them off the streets.”

    Take a look at the quotes from the protesters: “A second woman, who declined to give her name but described Kids Company as like “family”, said: “I don’t think Camila is in this to get money. The money she’s got is serious. It’s not even a profit thing. You can’t even get money from this organisation, it’s a charity. I just feel for the children.

    You have done it at a bad time. It’s half term now, the children are stuck at home with their parents. Some of those parents have got mental health problems.”…”

    In other words, ‘Shit! Now I’ve got Duweayne and Shaneesha hanging around me when I want to watch ‘Jeremy Kyle’…’

  14. According to her, the charity never had a problem with costs, only with their level of funding.

    Lol. Always the case, isn’t it?

  15. The department for education stopped paying the grand because it looked at the results and couldn’t see value for the £3m. So the Cabinet Office stepped in and paid it. That should raise some pretty serious questions about why that was done.

    I suspect what it’s really about is PR. Have a very ethnic person for Cameron to have photos taken with. If Camila Batmanbegins had worn a grey suit, I doubt they’d have got the money.

  16. Andrew M said: “There’s scant evidence that KidsCo was providing this level of support.”

    As best I can work out from media reports and their accounts, they ran several centres that sound a lot like youth clubs or some kind of childcare but have dressed it up as a form of child psychology. They probably do help a few vulnerable and abused children but the numbers get merrily inflated by these clubs.

    They also rented flats for teenagers to live in. A BBC series called Young, Dumb and living of Mum had the participants giving the flats a makeover for Kids Company too.

    There is another charity associated with Camilla – place2be. I’m not sure if it is that one or Keeping Kids Company that provides counseling services in schools and counts all the children in a school as having benefited from the charity’s work, whether they use the facilities or not.

    Batmanghelidjh puts in an appearance in this Common Purpose video.

  17. @JuliaM, well as Rob points out, it’s never their fault somehow, innit? So they’re entitled, right?

    No sign of abandoned luggage or half-shredded documents blowing across blackfriars bridge this morning, so maybe not quite Saigon. Someone’s left a window open, though, which has ironic potential.

  18. Why didn’t all the super-rich celebs, that Batman was regularly photographed with and who are raging at the EEEVILLL TORRIEEEEES, never felt the need to pony up the money she needed?

    Rhetorical question, obviously. Never spend your own money when you can tell someone else they are evil for not spending theirs.

  19. Did they get any money from those other money trees, Children in Need, Comic Relief, the EU and the Lottery?

    Suspect this would be a favourite for old ‘Sir’ Lenny Henry

  20. The Stigler: “So the Cabinet Office stepped in and paid it. That should raise some pretty serious questions about why that was done.

    I suspect what it’s really about is PR. Have a very ethnic person for Cameron to have photos taken with.”

    And oh, that worked out so well, didn’t it? Look at the goodwill it bought them:

    “Batmanghelidjh told the BBC on Wednesday she had acted responsibly and criticised the government for “airbrushing” the circumstances surrounding the demise of the charity.

    She said: “We’ve had to abandon a lot of children … that’s it, it’s the end of Kids Company and actually a bunch of rumour-mongering civil servants, ill-spirited ministers and the media, on the back of a range of rumours, put the nail in this organisation and shut it.”

    She questioned David Cameron’s role in the demise of her charity. “I have to think what do I do? There is insolvency law that requires you to behave in a particular way. Therefore, the doors have to shut and there cannot be any service provision – insurance stops, everything stops.

    “But I am still left with these kids and their needs. This is devastating – where is the prime minister of this country saying what’s going to happen to these children?”

    But it won’t stop him jumping on the next dodgy bandwagon that passes along, will it? Such is the folly of identity politics.

  21. There was some seriously hostile people on Victoria Derbyshire on the bbc news channel this morning. Both people invited into the studio and quotes from the protests yesterday.

    It’s as if the government provided all of their funding rather than around 1/5 (? Is that right) and that it was KC incompetency that meant it couldn’t ration its resources to not become insolvent and exist rather than now not exist.

    Some teenage girl interviewed from a protest mentioned something about not getting 20 vouchers anymore would lead kids to turn to crime apparently.

  22. Most of these kids probably were criminals already – it’s just that KC handed out the readies without the need to get the flick knife out…

  23. Has she played the “I’m very ill card” yet? Will she appear in court using crutches? Will she appear in court at all?

  24. Bloke not in Cymru

    Usual rhetoric of bringing up a total number then referring to a subset of that number in the next sentence without any numbers so it seems like the number quoted refers to the subset not the total. Just the sort of underhanded distortion of the truth is expect from this bunch.

    Owing 5.1m with deferred income and cash of 1.6m leaves a 3.5m hole, shows their level of financial responsibility of they thought 3m would sort it all out, unless you are thinking about financial responsibility to the trustees in which case it makes perfect sense. Though as she keeps bleating on its all about the kids ain’t it.
    Really hope they throw the book at her and the trustees this level of fraud, deceit and corruption is why we have rules regarding charities in the first place and ignoring will just destroy trust and donations for the charities that do genuinely good work

  25. “will just destroy trust and donations for the charities that do genuinely good work”: that is indeed the effect on me. The more I learn about big, national charities, the less their chances of getting a penny from me. Changed days from when we routinely gave money using deeds of covenant. It is, I suppose, roughly speaking, the Blairisation of charities.

  26. I sneeze in threes

    Isn’t the deferred income part of the “hole” too? They’ve had cash receipts in advance of when they can recognise the income (hence deferrel) but spent it already.

    It’s not like they spent it on stock to then sell and generate income.

  27. Does this sound a bit odd to anyone else?

    Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh claims scale of child sex abuse by senior Establish figures is worse than we think

    In an emotionally charged discussion, Ms Batmanghelidjh, who founded Kids Company 19 years ago, explained how on the charity’s final day, she had talked a child out of jumping off a platform in front of a train in a phone call. “The police arrived and tried to grab him mid-air,” she said.

    She talked someone out of jumping under a train but the police still had to try and grab him mid-air. Surely it’s one or the other.

    And this: Kids Company: benefactor pulled £3 million donation from charity as soon as ‘allegations of sexual abuse’ were raised

    Ms Batmanghelidjh told the BBC that within 20 minutes of a Cabinet office grant, also of £3 million, being handed to the charity last week, “the police call out of the blue to say that there’s been allegations of sexual abuse related to Kids Company”.

    She added: “Within the hour this is all over the news that Kids Company is being investigated … the minute the philanthropist discovers that this is on the cards – they freak and then they don’t put their money in, so then the deal breaks down.”

    I can’t put my finger on exactly why but the claims sound unbelievable. According to the BBC the private figure was matching the taxpayers contribution (which seems odd to me) and has not actually been withdrawn. I wonder if there is some connection between the ministers who approved the taxpayer donation and that private donation.

    Plucking at straws, the only vague connections I have happened upon so far are the ministers Matthew Hancock and Oliver Letwin both receiving donations from members of the Rausing family during their political careers and the Sigrid Rausing trust making grants to Kids Company. But given Kids Company’s extensive connections there are probably more than that.

  28. Bloke not in Cymru

    ‘Tried to grab midair’ would generally lead to the conclusion that they failed.
    Either way she clearly has no shame if she’s prepared to trot out some child’s attempt at suicide to support her case like this.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *