Please bear in mind these 3 relevant points:
1) Firstly, the Third Sector. It is also referred to as the Voluntary or Community Sector and includes organisations like charities. The Third Sector is full of very well intentioned, generous and caring people working very hard, either for nothing or on very low wages to help those less fortunate. What I am about to say is NOT a criticism of these wonderful people and their dedicated work however, it is a criticism of the way this sector is being heavily interfered with, altered and misused.
2) Secondly, Coincidence! We all know what a coincidence is. We might have a dream that Grandma’s ill and the next morning someone phones to say Grandma’s in hospital, she was taken ill during the night. How did we know? This kind of thing might make us think of the hand of God at work, or Fate – it’s unsettling. Or we might think – well, it was just one of those weird things! However, when a coincidence occurs in politics, is it really likely to be God or Fate at work, or just one of those weird things? No! It’s far more likely to be the hand of Alastair Campbell, or a weird thing like Peter Mandelson, or some other political advisor with an agenda. Franklin D Roosevelt, the famous US president from the WW2 years, is recorded as having said, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens you can bet it was planned that way.” Coincidence in politics? Please be sceptical!
3) Thirdly, Give and Take - another trick! The Government often tries to appear generous by giving publicly with one hand while actually quietly taking away with the other, usually leaving people worse off than before. How often after a budget, whichever party may be in government, do the British People find they have been given a rise in some allowance only to find they have now passed a tax threshold and will have to pay higher tax and so, in spite of a raise – they are left worse off? The winners and the losers after a budget; we all know about this kind of thing.
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I am sure that you, like me, believe that all British citizens have the right to know the truth. What is the truth? The Romantic poet, John Keats wrote,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html
The truth can reveal ugly, frightening, and disgusting facts which make us sick to think of and keep us awake at night worrying but, still, the truth always remains beautiful. It always has been, and it always will be, because it is right, because it is honest, it is real and it is reliable. We can always rely on the truth. We can never rely on lies and falsehoods, and to do so is to build a house on the shifting sands – it will always fall down in the end. I am a romantic because I believe that if good people strive hard enough on the quest for the Holy Grail of Truth in politics, we will work out what is good for this country and be able to put things right. What we want is simple, really. It is, justice for all. Real justice, fairness based on truth. Jesus Christ's New Testament teachings on truth which, in turn, became the justice of King Alfred the Great and eventually, down the centuries, our English Constitution, which then spread around the world to the United States, Canada, Australia, India, and all of our old Empire countries.
However, justice for all, and the principle of individual rights, most definitely do not fit in with the Community Principles now being slipped into our governmental and legal system. Sadly, the men
"people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."
- a quote from the American commentator H.L. Mencken.
Without openness and transparency in government and 'civil society,' will it ever be possible to put things right in Britain?
Where does all our tax money really go? And why are we really having all these endless cutbacks? Let’s start by getting the quote right. The Bible says it’s the love of money that is the root of all evil. Money in itself is not bad; it is the greed, the coveting and the corruption it promotes in certain people that is evil.
Prof. Kenneth Minogue of the London School of Economics states:
“It is a basic principle of human life that any large stock of money attracts corruption the way manure attracts flies. Charitable bequests need careful watching lest the money be misappropriated. Vast amounts of aid have been funnelled to the Third World since 1945, but relatively little of it has reached the ground. In high taxing democracies, politicians find themselves disposing of vast quantities of money and it is hardly surprising that corruption follows, even in Britain, which has a history of relative probity in its public life.” From his thought-provoking essay entitled: Are the British a Servile People? www.scribd.com/doc/19044026/Are-the-British-a-Servile-People-Idealism-and-the-EU page 8.
When a privileged group of people has absolute power over the public money of an entire country to spend on good works and services, common sense tells us that it is vital that ordinary tax-payers be informed. Records must be kept to prevent any illegality so that we can be assured that our money is being wisely spent however, it might shock you to realise that huge sums of public money, multi billions, are now being spent in the UK by organisations performing public duties that are not fully covered by the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This means we cannot always necessarily or easily find out very much about these organisations!
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 actually came into force on January 1st 2005; most people have heard of it, many have already used it and applied for information from the Public Sector. It applies to public authorities and companies wholly owned by public authorities so that the workings of government agencies is transparent. It applies to 100,000 public bodies including schools, government and local council departments. It is a very useful piece of legislation, but needs to go much further. The timing of the Act’s introduction is very interesting too! Remember - Do we believe in coincidence in politics?
I think we are absolute fools if we believe that it has been just a coincidence that the Freedom of Information Act has been introduced in Britain at precisely the time that, under the direction of the European Union, the British Government are massively shifting power and influence away from our traditional public authorities that have served us quite well in the past (and are now covered by this Act) to a host of organisations outside of national and local government – hundreds of thousands of quangos, NGOs, designated contractors, voluntary and community groups, social enterprises, private companies, charities, trusts, co-operatives and mutuals, none of which are covered by the F.O I. Act.
Remember – the Government gives with one hand but takes with the other! We have been given the right to information in the Public Sector which is being systematically destroyed and its power is being moved into the Third Sector! Where we do not have that right.
The latest aspect of this power shift is David Cameron’s “Big Society,” a scheme intended to hugely speed up this shift!
There is something very wrong and very dodgy going on here! And now the British people are being told that the Third Sector has to be slimmed down because we cannot afford it to be so huge as it is becoming and so, in response, what is happening? A sneaky form of PRIVATISATION? With no accountability under the Freedom of Information Act 2000? A new form of CORPORATISATION? Whatever that is?
Cameron is doing a very good job, stirring the Third Sector pool. There is a massive amount of money and power in there, and we must not find it! He’s muddying the waters, he won’t even refer to it as the Third Sector anymore. On ‘Prime Minister’s Questions,’ he referred to it as 'the First Sector'!
http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2010/07/cameron-rebrands-third-sector-as-first-sector
Cameron rebrands “third sector” as “first sector”
July 14, 2010 6:46pm by Jim Pickard
“I will certainly have those conversations with the Treasury, and we will want to do everything we can to help what used to be called, rather condescendingly, the third sector but I believe is the first sector: the excellent charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises that do so much for our country…so often these first sector organisations have the right answers to the social problems in our country.”
David Cameron is doing everything he can to distance himself and his government from the phrase ‘Third Sector,’ because of its connotations with New Labour and Tony Blair’s 'Third Way.' Cameron wants to rename the Third Sector, the First Sector, or ‘The Big Society’, or else he just refers to it as part of the Public Sector. Anything to confuse the public and deter us from looking into it this too deeply. You see, we have to be kept tired-out and stressed, confused and a bit fearful, to keep us compliant, basically like the proverbial mushrooms – in the dark and covered in sssh, you know what! That’s how the government and the elite bankers like us, deep in Plato’s cave, clueless and stumbling around in the dark, going around in circles – getting nowhere.
David Cameron has said that senior civil servants need “no longer concern themselves with bothering as to whether their ministry departments are efficiently run or not, from now on we will all be doing that instead,” by checking No 10’s new 'Transparency Website'!
Yes, No 10 has a new 'Transparency Website'!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11708375
http://transparency.number10.gov.uk
Perhaps a directive from the EU insists that Britain must have a transparency website? The EU has a 'Transparency Website' too:
http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/index_en.htm
The problem with No 10’s Transparency Website is that it isn’t very transparent. Type in the name of a Third Sector organisation (which is part of the Public Sector - according to ‘Call Me Dave’) and nothing pops up! We are being fobbed-off! This is not good enough, this is not right. We need respectable Government departments, run by responsible, qualified civil servants with integrity adhering to the Seven Principles of Public Life and answerable to requests for information from the public, not just selected info. slapped online - to shut us up.
www.stopcp.com/cpbreachesthesevenprinciples.php
Cameron was being facetious in this statement because he knows the British people have more than enough to do these days, working or trying to find work, for peanuts, in a shrinking economy, in a economic depression with student debts and all the other debts, with the prospect that many of us are going to have to work in crummy jobs either until we are 70, or until we die! We need straight answers to our questions, we don’t have enough time and energy to scroll around in vain hope. This is deliberate!
The simple and sensible way to tackle this would be to extend The Freedom of Information Act 2000 to cover all Third Sector organisations that perform a duty formerly performed by the Public Sector, or that would once have been performed by the Third Sector. This is not far-fetched either because New Labour recently looked into doing just this – or at least they gave that impression.
In 2008, the New Labour Government performed another of their “whitewash jobs.” The Ministry of Justice went through the motions of showing interest in extending the scope of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to some private and voluntary sector bodies. They sent out questionnaires and consulted “experts” (a bit like their ‘global warming’ experts?) to consider whether this Act could cover charities and designated contractors who are now providing services which once would have been provided directly by local councils. The contracting out of these services has lead to a reduction or loss of the right of access which otherwise would have existed under the Act. (School meals for example, street cleaning, care homes for the elderly, refuse collection, council housing, etc)
The outcome after all this consulting?
The government (NuLab) decided against extending the Act to cover non-profit organisations in the voluntary sector because of the burden – expense, workload, time, etc. that would be placed on small charities already struggling with few staff and resources.
This is a contrived cop-out! Section 1 Part 14 of the Act covers vexatious and repeat applications. Besides, small charities are highly unlikely to attract many requests whereas larger, more controversial organisations may well attract more but then surely that would be a good demonstration of the Act working well? Surely, if they receive our money, the very least these organisations can do in return is to be open and honest, and show us where our money is going, in other words justify their actions and decision-making to their benefactors, we the British public, by answering our questions and giving us the facts when we put in requests.
Our society used to be described in the following general terms – the Private Sector or the Public Sector. Once, organisations were either Public like the NHS, and state schools, or they were Private – such as British American Tobacco or small businesses. That was more or less it; most organisations fell into one or the other. There was a voluntary sector back then that was small and of lesser significance – or so it seemed.
The infrastructure of our country has changed drastically over the last 20-odd years. The non-profit, voluntary sector, now called the Third Sector, has become massive! Its influence is absolutely huge and it is growing all the time. The Third Sector now has a Minister and a Government Office. It has its own newspaper called Third Sector. Over 1,400 government departments come under the Third Sector, but that is not all!
The Third Sector is also comprised of over 170,000 charities! What do we think of when we say ‘charity’? Most of us think of organisations like Save the Children, the Samaritans or the RSPCA, but many charities nowadays are not like these. Some charities are called charitable trusts. What else can be a charity but is called something else? Well for example, many educational foundations are charities. The definition of “education” is not always clear either. Can you see that many organisations come under the classification but do not immediately spring to mind when we think of the word ‘charity?’ Other examples are the various think tanks and policy pushing organisations like the Young Foundation, the Rowntree Trust, and Demos? Organisations like these often get grants and donations from the government, wealthy individuals, companies and corporations plus they are classed as ‘non-profit’ organisations and have intersting tax status! Think about all that lottery money too, and the obscure “charities” that get grants from it. A Samaritans’ request for assistance was snubbed by the lottery fund but quack psychological “education” through NLP (hypnosis) in the form of thought leadership and diversity training charities - get awarded large grants!
The community sector as a whole receives over £10 billion of public funds annually, a figure which has doubled since 1997 (the year Blair came to power with his Communitarian vision). The turnover of some voluntary organisations runs to many millions of pounds and is greater than that of many public authorities! For example, many housing associations have been created solely for the purpose of taking over a local authority’s housing stock, and employ its former staff. This is the transfer of public authority functions to the voluntary sector as a result of explicit government policy and it removes information from the Freedom of Information Act’s scope. A growing number of people think it should be restored. The Campaign for Freedom of Information has done much work researching this area. See www.cfoi.org.uk
Private sector companies managing failing schools should be subject to the Act, so should local education authority functions which have been transferred to private contractors. Some of these involve contracts worth £100 million or more.
The New Deal Communities Partnerships and Local Strategic Partnerships should also be subject to the Act. The Audit Commission reported in 2005 that there were 5,500 partnerships in the UK accounting for £4 billion from public expenditure.
New kinds of hybrid organisations have now been set-up called CIOs – Charitable Incorporated Organisations, and CICs - Community Interest Companies! Many big firms and corporations now have a Community or Charitable department. Will these new kinds of organisation, which appear to be part private company and part charity, be covered by the Freedom of Information Act?
Within the wording of the Act, the opportunity does exist, to cover these types of organisation and many believe this should happen, wherever possible; by directly designating the contractor, trust or charity as a ‘public authority’ in its own right in relation to that service by virtue of its status, grant or tax exemption. Just imagine, if the Freedom of Information Act applied to the Third Sector, we could apply directly for all sorts of information and it could not lawfully be refused.
‘Cui Bono’ means ‘whose benefit’? It is an ancient rule from Roman times and still applies in criminal investigation. It asks – ‘Who benefits? Who stands to gain from this?’ and it can help establish motive.
Could what has been happening in recent years in the UK, as it is being asset-stripped, be classed as a crime against the British People? Think about the people we have seen in the news begging for their lives in recent years because their Local Health Authority cannot or will not pay for the drugs to save their sight or their life, the elderly and disabled people who have died of thirst, starvation or neglect in unfit, under-staffed care homes and hospitals, and our badly kitted-out troops who have needlessly died or sustained injury through being negligently under- equipped when sent to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and children like poor Baby P who’ve suffered and died horribly due to the under-funding of Social Services. This is a war! Against us! We are under attack – from our own wicked government! British people are dying because of these policies! New Labour cut funding in the Public Sector in a covert kind of way but we now have Cameron and Clegg blatantly doing it. Realise the truth.
Do we believe this country is really as poor as they claim? Surely not? Is there a direct link between developments in the Third Sector and the on-going huge, sweeping cutbacks in public services we are continuing to experience? The answer is, “Yes, most definitely.” Is the EU involved in this? Most definitely!
This is theft; it’s a conspiracy to defraud!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4_9XHd-Uts
Cameron has set out a list of quangos to be abolished. He describes this as cutting back on the ‘Public Sector.’ The list is here, it’s horrific! 177 quangos will be scrapped in cuts. I take absolutely no pleasure whatever printing this list, I want these organisation accountable and efficient – not destroyed! They do very important work, what will replace them? New charities perhaps? Some will be merged into other organisations, some will just disappear, some will be privatised and taken over by foreign investors.
The fact is, Government cutbacks hurt our people! Government cuts kill our people!
Following on from that train of thought, we must then wonder, where is the benefit to us from all this?
There must be benefit – to someone or some group? Otherwise they (the LibLabCon) wouldn’t be doing it, would they? Where is this leading us and what will the eventual outcome be?
Why are we British giving away our wealth through numerous strange, secretive charities? Why are we being persuaded that giving money and power to unelected people on the boards of these ‘agencies’ is sensible? What really lies behind this crazy agenda we are now following?
A poor country is an enfeebled country; its people are at the mercy of other more wealthy countries and the huge multi-national organisations that are now richer and more powerful than many countries! A wealthy country has power. Wealth and power go together. Where is our power going?
The UK’s established and traditional Public Sector is currently being hollowed out from within. Local Councils, District and County Councils have been rivalled by growing and ever-more powerful NGOs! At present, we can get rid of rotten councillors by voting for different ones – and this fact tends to stop any of them going too ‘Over The Top’! In the future, how will we get rid of a control-freak or a tyrant “appointed” to the board of the EU organisation that replaces a service in our local area? Or is put in charge of it? Conversely, how will we keep a good board on an NGO, if we can’t vote for them? Someone from outside can kick them off, and replace them. What can we do about it? How can the public keep an eye on the finances and other aspects of these NGOs? Without the Freedom of Information Act being expanded to cover these organisations, it is not possible.
David Cameron’s Big Society will be funded by raiding dormant bank accounts. The recent Queen’s speech, after his election to Prime Minister, includes an outline of their plans and this very interesting statement,
“…the role of social enterprises, charities and cooperatives in our public services will be enhanced".
www.thirdsector.co.uk/news/Article/1005679/Sector-will-enhanced-role-public-service-delivery-says-Queens-Speech
Cameron has also stated that radical reform of public services is needed and Third Sector organisations are one means by which to improve outcomes and reduce the national debt. Primary legislation is not expected, but Number 10 said that public services markets would, in appropriate areas, be opened up to allow Third Sector organisations to bid to run public services. "Barriers to involvement will be identified and measures will be implemented," the statement from Number 10 said. The government have also pledged to give public sector workers the right to form employee-owned cooperatives and bid to run the services they deliver. Cameron had only been Prime Minister for a day or two when this statement was made, which demonstrates how much a priority the Third or Voluntary Sector has become. And he makes it all sound so reasonable, doesn’t he? Are you fooled by this, because I’m not!
Ed Miliband has said he wants to reclaim “the Big Society” and turn New Labour into the biggest COMMUNITY organisation in Britain! It’s that awful “C” word again, It’s so offensive. I wonder how many people here really know what the word “community” means in the EU context because, be assured, this use of the word “community” does NOT mean what most of you think it does? “Community” is a buzzword, it’s trendy and it’s popping up everywhere now. And it is actually short for Communitarianism.
www.congregator.net/authors/eu-agenda-new-feudalists.htm
Some Third Sector organisations have also, over the last 20-odd years, developed a culture of secrecy by much more frequent use of the Chatham House Rule which encourages meetings to be held with no records being kept and attendees being forbidden to discuss these meetings, afterwards. The online description of this rule, on the Chatham House website, used to say that this rule permits those in authority to make decisions in secret in order to “promote openness, honesty and freedom of speech.” This description has recently been removed. I wonder why?
Can this be right? Do you believe this? Can secrecy really lead to openness?
Obviously, any fool can see that meetings held in secret involving public money, with no right under the Freedom of Information Act for the public to know, with no-one discussing these meetings and no records kept, are situations wide open to abuse. There are two layers of non-disclosure here, working together to keep the British tax-payer out of the loop. This has been going on since before Blair came to power; it is cross-party.
The extension of the Freedom of Information Act to cover the Third Sector will help the British people to do this more effectively.
The misuse of the Chatham House Rule in the Third Sector needs investigating too. We must find out where all our money is going, and why our power as a sovereign nation is being drained away.
Shareholders have the right to be fully informed and to scrutinise their company’s accounts so they can be assured they aren’t being ripped off! I think you will all agree that Britain, these days, seems to be being run more and more like a peculiar kind of business. And, if that is how the LibLabCon want to do things, it makes we, the British People, the investors and shareholders of the United Kingdom, if you think about it, even those of us who are under-age, unemployed, retired or in education. We all pay a multitude of taxes, road tax, VAT on nearly everything, household items, fuel, travel, etc. We are Britain’s shareholders, each and every one of us. Not Lord Sugar, Mohamed Fayed, Richard Branson or the Royal family, or the Rothschilds, No! - We ordinary people, are Britain’s most important shareholders. We invest more in Britain than anyone else, we invest in Britain every day and we have the right to be fully informed of the facts, especially the accounting! Just as the shareholders of any other business or corporation are.
Which brings me back to the question I asked at the start of this essay:
How can we ever hope to put things right here in Britain if we cannot find out the facts, the truth, about what those in power now are really getting up to? The answer to that question is that without the facts we will NEVER be able to! I repeat. Without the truth, we will NEVER be able to put things right!
There are lot of grown-ups out there who are getting a bit sick of being treated like children, and who simply want to know the truth.
An old joke brought into the first 21ST century!
No Dad, in the Third Sector – that’s where most of the crooks are now!
