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This was an effective hatchet job by the government and the media.
Except it wasn't, because despite the down with the people act, Batmanghelidjh is one of them. She came from a rich family and went to a £32,000 a year private school in Dorset.
Her connections to the rich and powerful kept things going for a long time, and resulted in Cameron overruling his own ministers and civil servants to keep it going. Now it's collapsed the Government (successive governments actually, Brown was in her thrall too) has egg on its face. Why would the government want to perform a hatchet job on itself?
And saying it's a hatchet job by the media is ridiculous too. Batmanghelidjh spent a lot of BBC airtime today saying they had to close because they'd run out of money and everyone was out to get her while not dealing with serious governance issues and financial irregularities (such as spending £800k of funding which was specifically not meant to be spent on salaries, on: salaries).
Miles Goslett's original expose in the Spectator was a perfectly valid piece of journalism, and his sources were people who had worked for, with and donated to the charity. If it was a hatchet job, why would a hatchet job come from a right wing publication, given how damaging any impuning of the charity's reputation would be to Cameron, given how closely he had positioned himself to it?
Another thing Batmanghelidjh did a lot of today on TV was blaming everyone but herself for the failure of Kid's Company. But she was running it. If any one person should take the blame, shouldn't it be her?
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Not all rich and privileged people = media and government?
Obviously there is overlap in places, but they are not one and the same ("is one of them"). And working your rich and privileged connections is not quite the same either.(edit for slow posting)
I guess the simple version is she has both friends and enemies in government and media...
hoefla
Stupid phone deleted my extended rant. Here are some key points;
Fuck
This was an effective hatchet job by the government and the media.
Some journos are cunts. Paying vulnerable kids for their stories to serve your fucking headline grabbers.
"Doesn't represent value for money" - fuck you. Seriously, fuck you. Does £6m spent on earplugs for the MOD that then subsequently had to be scrapped represent value for money? Where was the Newsnight and Buzzfeed investigation into that? Or the £7.2m spent on a mobile mine detection system that didn't work. Why isn't the person who signed that off being vilified and attacked because of their appearance and upbringing?
These historic allegations. Why did the whistleblowers not report them at the time? Where was their duty of care to protect the young people? How were KC to have done anything about it if they weren't told?
Don't be surprised when the suicide, crime and neglect numbers go through the roof in the areas directly served by KC centres and youth workers.
There was more but I've depressed myself enough rewriting that