"...Julia Middleton is the CEO, of Common Purpose. If this organisation wanted openness one would expect it not to enquire about who has been requesting FOI information about the nature of Common Purpose (CP) and its quasi-masonic secret society of careerists. Leaving that aside CP’s website claims that “More than 70 per cent of FTSE 100 companies have used Common Purpose for professional development.” How is being funded by big business and the government being independent of the aforementioned? [1]
Middleton works for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and therefore cannot be argued to be independent of government unless the truth is distorted, as it is in the MST. Bell and Middleton seem to be the instigators of the MST. Robert Peston (below), now City editor of the Sunday Telegraph, wrote in the New Statesman that:
A debate on media standards —with two editors, another BBC executive, an investment banker, a Bank of England luminary, academics and a bishop, inter alia—was more practical than most. We’d been summoned to dinner at the offices of Pearson, owner of Penguin and the Financial Times, by Julia Middleton, the unrecognised toiler for the rehabilitation of the concerned, engaged citizen.
Middleton doesn’t run things at Pearson, just yet, Peston seems to have been closer to things than the article revealed, Martin Moore (the director of the Media Standards Trust) stated that:
Sir David Bell, chairman of the Financial Times group, came up with the idea for the Media Standards Trust at a conference organised by Common Purpose in Leeds three years ago. Since then he and three others, Julia Middleton [...], Robert Peston (Business Editor, BBC News), and Sir Cyril Chantler [...], have worked to make it happen, establishing a board of trustees from the media and civil society, and searching for start-up funding from Trusts and Foundations. [2]
It should be noted then that not all of the people here necessarily go along with whatever Pearson and Middleton are up to — people offer their name to support boards without, at times, really knowing much of what is going on. But the fact that this organisation was put up by Pearson must make us suspicious of its intended aims.
Middleton formerly worked at The Industrial Society and with Demos. Her husband, Rupert Middleton went on a business course in USA where he spotted the Community Leadership Programmes and thought to emulate them. Middleton raised half a million in business sponsorship. According to Charles Handy, in the shockingly hagiographic ‘The New Alchemists,’ Common Purpose has 120 paid staff with turnover of £3m. Middleton’s father worked for Peat Marwick and she met Rupert, John Garnett, Julia Cleverdon at the Industrial Society.
CP’s web PR and sponsor list is quite impressive: but what does it really mean? There are a growing number of rants about it online, some around Middleton’s proximity to the Office of the Deputy PM and the political patronage thereof, others amass data to form a conspiracy: but there is growing evidence that the organisation is favoured by government in an untoward way: given free use of property and it seems to operate like a cult. But then you see her moaning about the same subject and seemingly taking everyone in. She was also associated with the Arab Learning Initiative, which describes its role as venture philanthropy, but strikes me as intelligence gathering.
Middleton is a well networked in the New Labour, Careerist, Atlanticist networks—Common Purpose had been around for sometime but gained a great deal of funding with the advent of New Labour and its service towards business elites. Initially money was put in by David Bell, then Chairman of the Financial Times and Demos’ trustee, the late Anita Roddick.
Their list of corporate sponsors is impressive and they say they have offices in every UK city. Put politely CP tries to promote ‘corporate community engagement’, the synergy between big business and well… it’s a bit like the asbestos factory owner’s daughter handing out religious tracts to the workers coughing at the factory gates. Relationships between corporate CP funders such as BAe Systems, Royal Ordinance and GEC Marconi and, say, the work of CP trustee David Grayson of the National Disability Council are ignored however. The idea is to accentuate the positive. The real value of CP must be measured by its closeness to power —access to which is what is on offer. The board has only one member who is openly employed by government, Gillian Ashmore. Her record speaks for itself:
“Gillian Ashmore is currently on secondment from the Department of Transport to the British Railways Board working on railway privatisation. She joined the Civil Service in 1971 and has worked variously in the Departments of the Environment, Transport, Employment and Trade and Industry. On the Transport side, she has worked mainly in the public transport field. In the latter two Departments she was Deputy Director of the Enterprise and Deregulation Unit. Mrs. Ashmore has also been a non-executive director of P & O European Transport.”
How is the Enterprise and Deregulation Unit doing thesedays, Incredibly with a business dominated line up the CP constitution has the cheek to say the organisation:
“is diverse and non-aligned. It draws on the widest possible variety of sectors, areas, and social groups and recognises only peer level and geographical boundaries as common factors to each group. It is always independent, always balanced and owes no historical or other allegiance to any other organisation. Common Purpose works for the benefit of society as a whole…”
What a pack of lies. CP creates the illusion that it is for ordinary people, but it is not only run by an elite, its projects cater exclusively for an elite: “the rising generation of decision makers” as they say in their web site. This also states that: “We are looking for applicants who are decision-makers in their city, towns or area”, and that “participants are over 30 and already hold a position of considerable responsibility”. They say their long-term aim is “educating the next generation of leaders in each city or town”. On this basis it is a fraudulent organisation and it must be said a bit creepy.
Funded by big business and public bodies (everyone from Arms companies, Banks to curiously the Scottish Arts Council—maybe through Ruth Wishart’s connection) they operate for their benefit while their constitution lies that they seek “the advancement of education for the public benefit… to educate men and women from a broad range of geographical, political, ethnic, institutional, social and economic backgrounds.”
With Trustees such as Gerry Robinson, the ex-Coca Cola salesman who is now chairman of the Arts Council of England and Janet Paraskeva, the director of the National Lotteries Charities Board (the ‘independent organisation’ which distributes National Lottery money supposedly to charities and community groups). CP has specialised in channeling money away from genuine charitable causes. Demos was also partially funded directly via the Arts Council/Lottery ‘New Opportunities Fund’.
The illusion of independence from funders and government was abandoned with CP’s biggest project, ‘Citizen’s Connection’. Tony Blair’s old flat mate Lord Falconer’s New Millennium Experience Company (NMEC) said that: “Camelot, NMEC and Common Purpose created…Citizens Connection.”
But the legal position of the Camelot Group plc is this: as the operator of the UK National Lottery it is supposed to be “not responsible for the allocation of funds raised”. Except when it is. The NMEC was (is?) an extraordinary concoction. According to their press release the “NMEC is a non-Departmental Public Body and a company, independent from government with one shareholder, Lord Falconer”. This makes it an Anstalt, a financial vehicle more commonly associated with Swiss Bank accounts and money laundering. The ‘off-shore account’ was pioneered by the Mafia: their Lotteries (’the numbers racket’) were deemed illegal because of the evidence that they preyed upon the poor— the National Lottery magically does the reverse.
NMEC is funded by the National Lottery via the Millennium Commission (who tried to be independent from government but were threatened with a judicial review). NMEC ran the Dome and a national programme of events across the UK. It is misleading to gather all this up as the problem with ‘the Dome’. For instance, Labour MP Robert Marshall-Andrews tabled a Commons question on numerous secret contracts worth some £450 million—awarded by the NMEC, “a company with no direct lines of information or accountability”. But with millions pouring down the drain (well, into a few people’s pockets) an attempted diamond heist and daily financial craziness at the Dome, no one really noticed anything unusual when Camelot, whoever runs Common Purpose and Lord Falconer gave £2 million to Common Purpose to run a web site which links to the governments’ sites, which is all Citizen’s Connection is.
People have to pay to join up for any CP programme, so who is this money going to? Just about all of CP projects are extensions of PR exercises run by big companies, such as the ‘Your Turn’ project, which was directly run by BT’s PR consultants, so effectively these are being underwritten. Yet —even while CP got millions for their web site—’Your Turn’ was specifically given additional funding by the National Lottery Charities Board, which as we have seen with CP board member, Janet Paraskeva has a conflict of interest, which seems to be another word for common purpose: that and making money..."