The British People
deserve Openness and Transparency in Britain. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 must be
extended to cover the Third Sector. The
Chatham House Rule must be abolished from routine use in Public Life and Civil
Society, and must be reserved for situations of dire emergency only, as
originally intended.
By Lisa Hicks.
Please bear in mind
these 3 relevant points:
1) Firstly, the Third Sector. Also referred to as the Voluntary or
Community Sector, 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. This 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.
These three points
are relevant to this essay.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
I am sure that you, like me, believe that all British citizens have the
right to know the truth. What is the
truth? The English Romantic Poet, John
Keats wrote,
"Beauty
is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Sadly, the truth frequently reveals ugly, frightening, and disgusting
facts which make us sick to think of and keep us awake at night worrying about but,
still, the truth always remains
beautiful. It always has been, and it always will be, because it is right,
because it is honest, because it is real. 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 the 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 systems. 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.
- a quote from the American commentator H.L. Mencken.
Without openness and transparency in government or 'civil society,'
will it ever be possible to put things right in Britain? How can we ever hope to put
things right here if we cannot find out the facts, the truth, about
what those in power now are really getting up to?
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 and what they are doing!
The Freedom of Information Act 2000
actually came into force on January
1st 2005; most people have heard of it, you may have already used it
and applied for information from the Public Sector yourself. It applies to public authorities and companies
wholly owned by public authorities so that the workings of government agencies
is transparent. It applies to over 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?
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 mutual;
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 as huge as it is becoming and so, in
response, what is happening? A sneaky
form of PRIVATISATION? Again, with no
accountability under the Freedom of Information Act 2000? A new form of CORPORATISATION?
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’!
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.”
Prime Minister 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, by calling it '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 too deeply. Tony
Blair does not call it the Third Sector anymore either, he now refers to it as ‘the
Philanthropy Sector.’ 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 like us, deep in Plato’s cave, clueless and stumbling around in the
dark, chasing shadows, 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
(the people) will all be doing that
instead,” by checking No 10’s new Transparency
Website.
Yes, No 10 has a new Transparency Website!
Perhaps a directive from the EU insists that Britain must have a
transparency website? The EU has a Transparency Website too:
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’ Cameron) 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. Instead, we are getting just
selected info. slapped online - to shut us up.
Cameron was being facetious, 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 an economic depression with student debts and all the
other debts, with the prospect that many of us are going to have to work 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 way to tackle this is to call for the extension of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 the 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 a far-fetched idea either because the New Labour Gov. recently looked into
doing exactly 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 led 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?
New Labour 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. How
thoughtful of them!
This is a contrived cop-out! Section
1 Part 14 of the FOI Act 2000 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? Wouldn't it? 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 category 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 of third sector organisations are
the various think tanks, and lobbying / 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 don’t pay regular
taxes! Think about all that lottery
money too, and the obscure “charities” that get grants from it. For example, the Samaritans’ request for
assistance has been snubbed by the lottery fund board (who are appointed, not voted for) but quack psychological “education”
through NLP (hypnosis) in the form of thought leadership and diversity training
charities - which have no professional infrastructure to validate and police them in training and ethics- get awarded large grants! Hmmm!
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) and mushrooming. 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!
Chris Everard on Tax at 5.15
mins. – 12.30 mins:
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
organisations 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, many 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 though? Otherwise they (the
LibLabCon) wouldn’t be doing it, would they? Where is this leading us and what will be the
eventual outcome?
Why are we British giving away our wealth through numerous strange,
secretive charities?
Why are we allowing ourselves to be 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 dangerously 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 with stinkers! NGOs and
Quangos are also not permanent, they come and go and morph into different
organisations like double-glazing firms. What can we do about this? How can the
public keep an eye on the finances and other aspects of the Third Sector?
Without the Freedom of Information Act being
expanded to cover these organisations, it is not going to be possible.
David Cameron’s Big Society will be funded by raiding dormant bank
accounts. The 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".
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 am 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 really know what the
word “community” means in the EU context because, I assure you, 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. The clue is in the first 7 letters, and it is
actually short for Communitarianism.
Some Third Sector organisations have also, over the last 20-odd years, have
developed a culture of secrecy by
much more frequent use of the Chatham
House Rule which was originally set up for use ONLY in dire emergencies such as impending foreign attack, or national disasters. This rule permits 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, once used to state 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 in Public Life (or 'Civil Society' as it is now being called, its the latest trendy expression) 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 and with no-one
discussing these meetings and no records being 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, it is wicked and it has to be stopped.
1) The extension of
the Freedom of Information Act to cover the Third Sector will help the British
people to do this more effectively.
2) The misuse of
the Chatham House Rule in the Third Sector needs investigating, and stopping.
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 giant commercial business.
And, if that is how the LibLabCon want to do things, then 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 our young people even
invest with their lives in the Armed Forces so 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 a huge number of grown-ups in Britain who are now getting a bit
sick of being treated like children and who simply want, and are entitled to, the beautiful truth.
Why aren't you angry yet, you idiots? You are letting the UK be robbed blind by criminals IN GOVERNMENT. Read the UK Column, watch UK Column TV and learn something. What is a Bradbury Pound? Find out, and start demanding it!
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