Tuesday, 10 November 2009

I no longer understand this world

Am I alone in this?

What do you make of this?

If we were taking about 'corrupt officials' syphoning off aid funds in some near-failed 'developing' state, then it might make a bit of sense. I would have a conceptual slot to fit the information.

But in the UK? I can understand their being at it in the 'financial institutions', just as I can understand how their bubble burst (or a while, anyway) and wrecked things for the rest of us. Terms like 'corporate greed' allowed us ways to talk about this.

But charities? And it is all legal.

Ought we to be coining terms like 'charitable greed', to make sense of the this new world of wide boys, ready for when their house of cards starts tumbling down and they come cap in hand for their Government bail-outs.

I'm lost.
Posted by at 16:31
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1 comments:

  1. A Comment below the article you quote: "The ethos of the voluntary sector being corrupted? What about the corporatisation of said sector?"

    In the first 3 paragraphs of the article, 3 different terms are used: "charities", "voluntary sector", "not-for-profit sector". The article appears in a journal entitled "Third Sector" which adds a 4th term. Do we/you agree that these four terms are synonyms?

    According to the article, the Union chap names several organisations: Anchor Trust, Riverside Housing Group, the UK Film Council, the National Trust, Age Concern and the RSPB.

    I have not the time to check, but suspect that these organisations have very different income stream profiles, varying between those heavily dependent on voluntary income from the public (RSPB?) and those that mainly provide services under contract for fees (Anchor?), that may well have more in common with the private sector than with traditional 'can-rattling' charities.

    All are "charities", by virtue of registration, no doubt. In what sense are they voluntary?

    And as the Comment-writer indicates, increasing corporatisation is changing the nature of the sector.

    It is disappointing that the author of the article and the Unite and ACEVO spokespersons fail to address these basic issues and, consequently, only add confusion to the murk.
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