Wonderful.
Best ignore the adverts urging you to donate to charities for the homeless, the mentally ill and the drug addicted. Take a plate of minced pies out to the streets instead, it will do more good.
The ‘former chief executive’, Mike Potts, of just such a charity, ‘People Can’, has been left ‘shocked’, shocked I tell you, by the news that the local council will NOT be taking over the essential services that he should have been providing to 452 ‘profoundly vulnerable people’ this Christmas time. Victims of rape, child abuse, serious domestic violence, and self harm.
Why won’t the charity be providing these services to such ‘profoundly vulnerable people’ this Christmas?
That is because charity begins at home – and ‘People Can’ has gone bust providing excellent pensions to its (currently) 300 employees and former employees. They were offered the opportunity to take a cut in their pensions and continue to provide help to those ‘profoundly vulnerable people’.
Potts said his charity was stable financially and winning new contracts. But after a write-down in the value of its assets, it found itself with a £17m pension liability. It presented a solution to the Pensions Trust, which operated its pension scheme, that it said would have allowed it to meet its obligations while continuing as a going concern, but this was rejected, pushing it into administration.
Stephen Nichols, chief executive of the Pensions Trust, said the rescue proposal was flawed. The trust considered People Can to be unviable, and he said it had a duty to protect the interests of its other members.
Never let it be said that charity has a duty to protect the interests of those it seeks donations for…
Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...
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Potts said his charity was stable financially and winning new contracts
Huh? That doesn’t sound much like a charity to me and the Guardian article you link to declares that this outfit had 40 contracts with local authorities. Amid all the hand-wringing in the Guardian it is clear that what we have here is a perfectly predictable triumph of self-interest over mock altruism.
Interestingly the Charities Commission shows People Can (Charity Nr. 1139803) as being Registered as recently as 12 January 2011 so it’s a wonder how its pension obligations can be so onerous. How can this be?
Fake charities going to the wall brightens the festive period considerably.
Could it be that they inherited a bunch of public sector employees whose love of the gold plated pension is well documented?
Well that struck me too as a possibility in which case Mr Potts has some questions to answer about the quality of his stewardship, doesn’t he, and the employees in question will be grinding their axes?
I’ve referred to it before, and it’s appropriate to once again, refer your esteemed readers to Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:-
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that:-
In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Ah yes that good old gold-plated pension argument that gets trotted out. My colleague, who has worked in the public sector since leaving school, and has moved up the rank system, will retire on the dizzy sum of £14,000 per year. Not even copper-plated at today’s copper prices. Let’s not confuse ourselves with what politicians, whitehall mandarins and captains of industry manage to get paid into their pensions as they screw up the country and companies alike.
That dizzy sum of £14,000 is still more than a private individual would get for the same contributions, your colleague has probably had their pension pot tripled by the taxpayer, that’s why it’s gold plated.
Wrong again sadly. You need to work on your maths!
Wrong again sadly. You need to work on your maths! Our pensions have been cut, but our contributuions have been increased. Our pension is self-financing and is not in debt. The only 2 employers that I had in the private sector who had the foresight to contribute to a pension for me, one in manufacturing the other in media contributed a larger percentage than my public sector employer does.
The maths aren’t important, the point is that ANY contributions made by your employer whilst in the public sector is money taken off taxpayers to boost your pension. A private individual gets a pension based ONLY on the money THEY have contributed
Wrong again. Both my private sector employers contributed to my pension. Somebody paid for that in higher prices for the goods that we sold.
The private provision of pensions has been very badly affected in the last couple of decades, and especially so in the last five years; the annuities that a saved pension pot will purchase has about halved in that time. An index-linked pension costs far more to buy than a flat-rate one, and retirement before 65 costs more again. Most pension pots (individually saved, or company schemes) have suffered through tax relief changes, and through falls in investment returns during the economic crisis. There is only one FTSE100 company still operating a final-salary pension scheme, and they are as rare as hen’s teeth elsewhere.
For a married man aged 60 to purchase an index-linked pension of £14,000pa would require a pension pot of something like £350,000 to £400,000 (using figures from the FT). To save that would take quite a substantial proportion of an average earners’ salary, an unacceptable proportion of which would disappear in charges levied on their hapless customers by pension providers..
Someone receiving an occupational pension of £14,000pa will also, in due course, receive the state pension as well, bringing their annual income to about £21,000pa. For someone with the mortgage paid off, and reduced travel (to work) costs, that’s a reasonable (though by no means excessive) income. It will cover the running costs of a modest house, food and clothing, and leave a few bob for holidays and luxuries. Many people survive on far less.
The provision of decent pensions to cover all old-age citizens has become an absolute mess. Public sector pensions are now the bestavailable, in some cases by a very considerable margin. Successive governments have avoided grasping the nettle of ensuring decent and fair provision (by public, private or employer-run schemes), and some have actually made things worse. A root-and-branch overhaul is needed, but there seems to be little actio from government except tinkering at the margins. The current ‘reforms’ to public pension provision are simply a belated (and only partial) attempt to prevent the next generations being saddled with a huge, and growing, liability.
There is no benefit to anyone in not reforming pension law so that all (public and private sector) can save fairly for a decent income in old age, without being a burden on future taxpayers. Until someone really addresses the problem, we’ll be stuck with multitudinous, and growing, iniquities.
Boo fucking hoo.
Thanks for your valuable input.
All I can say is that if he had worked his full 40 years in the Civil Service, he couldn’t have moved far up the system. After this period you can expect something like half salary and a lump sum, or somewhat more if you go without the lump sum,
She!
I noted that, too and find it difficult to imagine how, after one of the oddest market rallies in history, (stocks, up. Bonds, up (Club Med excepted) they can acquire such a massive turd in the water pipe.
I don’t believe word of it…
Er, People Can was registered in 2011 when it changed its name. Here’s an article about how it came about from the merger of three charities. As for “fake charities” it competed for contracts to undertake work for local authorities, work that otherwise might have been done (oh, the humanity) by local government workers. So they were kept off the books. Of course, in an ideal world all the damaged people would crawl off and die quietly so that society could concentrate on upgrading to G4 phones.
Brian, your link doesn’t work for me but I’ll take your word for it although the Charity Commission makes no reference to such an amalgamation. My contention is that there is maladministration if so young an organisation folds under the burden of its pension obligations. Somebody (apart from the taxpayer, who is always the loser) has been sold a pup and somebody else has done the selling.
I feel myself strangely unmoved by your odd concatenation of ‘damaged people’ and ‘G4 phones’ in large measure because I refuse to succumb to the pessimistic mindset that damaged people are neither ever responsible for their own ‘damage’ nor able to be anything other than suppine in the face of adversity coupled with an awareness that those of us who are early adopters of consumerist fads are doing their silly best to replenish the coffers that you seem to think an unlimited resource for society’s victims.
http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/finance/news/content/3269/novas_to_merge_with_the_scarman_trust_and_path
Are you having a giraffe?
According to your link, three organisations merge into one that is not called People Can, it happens in 2008 rather than 2011 and none of the protagonists are called Potts.
My browser warned me that the Civil Society site is dangerous to view.
Take a look at the Charity Commission page for People Cam. Do you see the old names under the heading Other Names? Novas Scarman Trust, for example. Dear me.
And Oxfam was established in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief yet the Charity Commission website only records it since 1965 when it was registered under that name:
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityFramework.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=202918&SubsidiaryNumber=0
Take a look at the link in my comment # 54 to learn when Mr Potts joined.
Agreed. Too many charities seem to be businesses in disguise and have an advantage over genuine businesses operating in the same field by virtue of their tax advantages. Another area of Tax Avoidance that the government should examine.
I ignore all those that are not run on the sniff of an oil rag by volunteers with one or two administrators doing it for the goodness of their hearts and the minimum wage. Every other charity stinks of public sector entitlements and leftie self congratulation. I pay taxes so involuntarily subsidise way too many, I disagree with charity breaks for an awful lot of lobby front groups calling themselves charities who want me to pay more tax on windfarms and other superstitions, they have perverted the concept of charity itself, giving with love.
I think most of these big charities are just a bunch of greedy self serving public sector shysters. If you’re naive enough to give them any money the vast majority of it will be spend on running the charity with big salaries for the management team, expenses, and 7 series BMW’s. They all seem to increasingly employ aggressive street chuggers out to take advantage of the kind hearted and vulnerable who will be firmly assisted in taking out recurring never ending direct debits from their bank account.
Yet in other circumstances the same doesn’t apply. The Plymouth Brethren, which is a relatively small Christian community undertaking genuinely charitable acts out of Christian duty and fellowship, has been subject to a very strong attack on their charitable status.
Yet political organizations which have an agenda to push (from aid, to “Green Issues”, to Common Purpose) are able to exploit their charitable status as a tax dodge, funded by taxpayer contributions. There should be a radical redrawing of the lines as to what a charity should be to limit it to providers of direct welfare to the needy and helpless (poor, old, ill and animals). Everything outside that should NOT be a charity, certainly no charity should receive ANY funds from the state as happens widely at the moment (again Common Purpose is a good example).
THIS!
This is interesting – and relevant.
What a good link. Clear, unequivocal and succinct. Thanks, Anna.
Hear! Hear!
“Anti-poverty policies that focus on economic growth, to the detriment of social cohesion and sustainability, are doing little to eradicate poverty, even in one of the world’s richest nations. […] Clearly, trickle down is not working, and an economy is being created that is not delivering for a large and growing number of people.’
Pointing out the reasons why a political philosophy is not helping to solve social problems is obviously a political statemzent. It cannnot be anything else, given the sectors that these charities work in. If that is the nature of the beast then so be it.
This contentious prattling about the Emperor’s new clothes is just messing about with the Titanic’s deckchairs and certainly unproductive. We are already seeing the results of Government policies, with an increase in homeless people, soup kitchens and charity food stores. Coming soon to these streets, 25 year olds with their families living in cardboard boxes and tents, those with disabilities of extreme kinds begging from wheeled orange boxes and dying in doorways.
What does it take for the terminally smug to actually do something truly selfless? Hear! Hear!
Um,” prattling about the Emperor’s new clothes is just messing about with the Titanic’s deckchairs”…..did you drink the cognac meant for the Xmas pud and how will you light it now? Thank you for a very unexpected Xmas present. Now I’m off to clear a couple of dead youth from the driveway before I remove the wheeled orange box they left.
I know a very small amount about this stuff. The problem lies in the huge pensions liabilities that were imported into these arms length bodies when staff were transferred from the public sector. The bizarre ways in which pension liabilities and earnings are calculated by accountants (under direction of the Financial Reporting Standards) means that the contributions are growing, while the overall pension funds go ever deeper into deficit. Closing schemes might not be a solution either, since the severance costs (to protect other contributors) can be enormous. A company has to be making fairly hefty profits, first to meet the contributions, but also to reassure clients etc that their negative balance sheet (driven by the liability for the under-funded pension scheme – £17M in this case) does not mean that they are insolvent. Clearly, and as the Grauniad piece says, the Pensions Trust did not believe either the People Can’s business plan or that the charity was financially stable. Quite what the Gummument was supposed to do about this is not clear.
“that were imported into these arms length bodies when staff were transferred from the public sector”.
Well, wha’d'ya know! Thank you Stevegee.
Not many charities have staff imported from the statutory sector from my detailed knowledge of it.
Oh, but many charities have structured their staff ‘benefits’ on local authority rates.
…and although I hesitate to be overtly political here, one must not forget the fatal damage done to an excellent pensions industry by the appalling Brown/Balls grab on pension funds, which the coalition have not reversed, much to their eternal discredit and damnation.
Most probably under a law brought in by Labour called Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_Undertakings_(Protection_of_Employment)_Regulations_2006
It’s a killer of enterprise for private sector, and a ring-fencing of inadequacy in the public sector.
Sorry, should have said brought in by Labour but – as is always the case – emanating from the Socialists in the EU.
Hopefully you will be able to point out the inadequacy of the surgeons / doctors / nurses who save your life and care for you if you are ever in a serious accident. Dick.
Don’t start on the inadequacies of the NHS. There seem to regular scandals these days – Mid Staffordshire, Maidstone, care of the elderly, and the most recent headlines about the NHS having lost it’s compassion. There are plenty of decent people who either do, or want to do, a brilliant job within the NHS, but somehow the monster seems to be consuming them. The NHS is not as good as it used to be, and too often is not as good as it should be these days.
Another scandal breaking – the Alexandra hospital in Redditch has admitted leaving 38 patients screaming in pain, and allowed one to starve to death.
Why? Have they all been TUPE’d out to organisations outside the NHS? I must have missed that headline.
It has always surprised me that few have asked the question as to why modern charities actually exist. They are clearly not of the stuff of voluntary philanthropy of days long gone, nor are they properly statutory services underwritten by government.
Has no one but me realised just how many make a rather healthy living and retirement from poverty and the vulnerable – globally? the National Association of Voluntary Services, the rather ‘bloated’ UK umbrella body, whose actual purpose is unclear in terms of benefit to the vulnerable, likes to harp on about the value of charities. But to whom exactly? Those who get well paid jobs and pensions from them? Most are now ‘corporate structures to whom an allegiance (not an allegiance to the poor and vulnerable) is an absolute requisite.
I expect many give to charity because they do not want to personally deal with the tragedy of ‘real people’ who are not exactly part of their own social scene. What a sad reflection on human behaviour.
Charities are the fronts for the corporate realm today, previous to that they were a tax free money grab for local fat cats to further squeeze the locals into handing over their cash.
Doubt not the power of the emotional canon.
Charities today acting as outsource providers to our civil system are not only limited in transparency, they are limited companies.
Unaccountable with limited liability and they are taking our tax-pounds at a rate that would make the accounts of the BIS look like the corner shop.
And Jimmy the ‘charity’ Savile, is but another nail in the coffin for our social services as they run hand over foot to give it too…..the charitable trusts..
This http://www.peoplecan.org.uk/ appears to be their web site. I couldn’t find out how to go about making a donation. What sort of charity doesn’t ask for contributions or shout about their latest fund raising event or their star fund raiser?
Probably one that is in administration.
Take a look at the site, Brian.
Apalling.
I am sure it won’t be the last charity to fold – the Government squeeze on funding strikes at many of these organisations. It is, however, utterly indefensible to put the needs of the staff before those of its service users.
I’ve regularly helped with a local charity for many years. Most of us agree we do it because we enjoy it as much as because it’s a good thing.
Helping to meet a need where and when we can is one thing. Squeezing through loony left H & S, security checks, gender and minority needs hoops imposed by the uninvolved, no thanks. So the first sign of a contract to tick the council’s boxes, I’ll walk.
Luckily we don’t need their money.
I’ve had the chuggers at the door. It’s one thing to call with the Christian Aid envelope /Poppies/Lifeboats. It’s entirely another to get two earnest young uniformed men pestering you on your doorstep. And last year it was Macmillan playing politics; shame, their people have been so good.
I just think charities should be about people doing something they can and want to do; not opportunists exploiting charitable status or pretending to be some kind of authority.
So there will be overlaps, and gaps; we do our best but could do better. So what. We’re volunteers and it’s a charity, not a universal service.
I have just caught up with the six o’ clock news….a heart rending piece about the victims of domestic violence, lots of tears, emotive sections about how these victims won’t be helped this Christmas ‘because of the ‘cuts’ – not a word about the fact that the charity that should have helped them has gone bust funding its own pensions…..nearly threw a shoe at the TV…..and it is the same charity they are talking about – the figures and the towns match precisely.
I have worked for several charities over the years – Oxfam was the worst. The money they fritter away on unnecessary trivia is unbelievable, so the fact that this lot put their own pensions first does not surprise me.
There are an awful lot of hypocrites out there…
Here here!- you will find the most self deceptive in the public and charitable sectors. At least with businesses in the private and commercial world one is under no illusions of pretence to do do other than line personal and shareholder pockets.
The public and charitable sector use the ‘poor and vulnerable’ and those ‘needing control of their actions / behaviours’ as the excuse for personal greed or getting ‘honours’ to further progress careers and gain positions of importance in the government systems as ‘experts’.
It is disturbing how many people I’ve seen on tv or heard on the radio or read online who don’t realise that business’s are there to make a profit for their owners and especially these days, the top management. They complain about not being given time to pay/ unhelpfulness of the company/ that the company has been economical with the truth and don’t see that such behaviours are common in the business world because of the desire for profit.
Well said.
Oxfam lost my support when they rolled over and coughed up a million dollars tax to the Sri Lankan government on Tsunami assistance to Sri Lanka instead of going public and/or telling them to go suck a Zube :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4103054.stm
I used to support that well-known charity The Royal Society for the Enrichment of Lawyers until it rebranded itself the RSPCA
http://www.cotswoldjournal.co.uk/news/10113248.Heythrop_Hunt_fined_for_fox_hunting/
Me too, not another penny, I thought it was to help animals but I gave up on them over the fox hunting issue when they were nothing more than lobbyists. I have no strong feelings about hunting except the hounds took the old and sick, surely better than healthy young animals shot or trapped but, never having anything to do with hunting that is just my opinion. My husband once had an IT contract with Oxfam and wouldn’t ever give them anything as he said everything in their offices were the height of luxury with no expense spared while they often mocked the ‘silly old ladies’ who volunteered to work in their shops. I stick strictly to small local animal charities that get no government funding. I am sick of all the fake charities.
It wasn’t so long ago that they bulldozed the kennels at their HQ to make room for some swanky new offices… no doubt to accommodate their lawyers in the style to which they’ve become accustomed. Sadly another example where the institution has become more import than the outcome.
Is all this any different from how the big religious organisations, such as the Catholic Church or the Moslem Brotherhood, have behaved for centuries?
It is a technique for making a comfortable living by emotional blackmail.
An article from 2009: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/city-pay-culture-has-spread-to-charities-union-says-1817725.html
Union chiefs complaining about excessive compensation of fake charities executives, my word they don’t like competition do they?
Is this the reason why People Can went into administration? I can’t find any articles on the web that state that employees and retirees were offered the opportunity to take a pension cut..
I can’t put links into my comments either – probably best to just paste the whole www thing if there’s somethig worth looking at.
http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/bulletin/third_sector_finance_bulletin/article/1162496/analysis-people-forced-administration-liabilities-past/?DCMP=EMC-CONThirdSectorFinance
Well no, it’s not the reason, is it?
Your linked article gives conflicting opinions about who and what are to blame and contains no original research to help us.
Er, Novas brought with it the pension obligations of its much larger self, ie before it had divested its social housing arm. It was like trying to fit a quart of obligations into a pint income pot.
And your original research to support the assertion that employees turned down a reduced pension is where?
Brian it’s not my job to rootle around to find supporting evidence for your argument so forgive me if I don’t look up the Charity Commission page for name changes of earlier incarnations of People Can.
Where did I ever contend that employees turned down a reduced pension? I know nothing about that.
I do question the quality of the charity’s management and administration and you appear to be agreeing with me: how could the trustees and Mr Potts allow the quart/pint situation to take them by surprise.
I also question the use of charitable status to cloak an organisation funded out of tax revenues.
Read your comment #1 where you reference the Charities Commission website for People Can. Reading Anna’s post, ie “People Can’ has gone bust providing excellent pensions to its (currently) 300 employees and former employees. They were offered the opportunity to take a cut in their pensions ” might help as well.
You extrapolate without any rhyme or reason – my comment #1 says nothing about the possibility of reduced pensions and referring me to Anna’s original posting is also a bit lame saince it was written not by me but by – er – Anna.
By all means take issue with me on what I have written but you seem to be scratching around rather ineffectually to create an aunt sally out of what you would like me to have written.
By any yardstick, there has been sub-standard management and administration of People Can and whether this amounts to mal-administration is something for PwC and the Charity Commission.
I’m afraid that with most charities now don’t give a damn about the people they are supposed to protect. There only concern seems to be “What’s in it for me?”.
“Pull the gangplank in Jack, I’m on board!”
I’m a pensioner, living alone with no family or friends to speak of. For the last 16 years I have spent Christmas alone, listening to the parties and rave-ups of my neighbours on either side. To me this is the most miserable time of my life.
The local Age Concern have a Christmas Dinner for a limited number of old people every Christmas day, but I have never yet managed to get on the list.
It seems that all the so-called charities for the elderly just don’t want to know these days. Despite the adverts on TV and radio asking people to find out if there are old people living alone near them and to check up on them over the Christmas period, nobody bothers. Perhaps they think that Social Services or other people will. How mistaken they are!
A sad story. When I have said similar to people they have advised me to get out of the house and volunteer!!!
I have said it before and I will say it again. There was a change to the character of many people in the UK once Thatcher got in. A grasping, grabbing, sod everyone else attitude.
Andy and Anna – People have said the same to me, “get out and volunteer”, but they don’t realise that when you are 75, suffering with athritis and practically housebound, what use are you helping people possibly younger than yourself?
I came to the conclusion a long time ago that most charities are big business, concerned only with making maximum profits for the owners and shareholders. They seem to go out of their way to talk you out of any help you might ask for. Even the Social Services seem to operate along those lines!
Just as there was when Blair got in. A nasty, self-entitled, rights over responsibilities attitude.
Well, that did not take too long-It wuz all Margaret Thatchers fault-the default position of socialists for all ills. I remember the UK of the 1980′s, it was a “down-at -the-heels” country, it remains so, whether socialist or conservative governments makes no difference, they struggle to fund a welfare state which is beyond the productive capacity of the country.
A closer analysis might reveal that every government since 1949 have been recklessly avoiding funding pension schemes properly.
I don’t think Thatcher introduced the ‘my rights, your responsibilty’ culture, but that’s a different debate.
There are many reasons for the decline in support for local good works- wives and husbands working; people with more than one part time/shift jobs; more self employed, which mysteriously means working more than 9 till 5. It’s not just selfishness, and what does anybody else owe us anyway?
I was widowed last year, no family nearby, still devastated, but have eventually managed to get by and re-engage in some things locally. I know others that have managed less well, and that pointing them towards possible interests and contacts doesn’t always work.
Sadly, there’s no easy answer to this one. I think it’s a lot more about other people’s time than money.
Before Thatcher ‘got in’, this country was teetering on the brink of totalitarian collapse, much the same way it is now heading again.
She and her advisers breathed some freedom back into the country that was so plainly self evident, that the Conservatives remained easily in government for quite a long time.
It was only after she was removed and the Conservatives managed to make themselves more or less unelectable by becoming so pathetic, that a stronger sounding Tony Blair was able to get in.
The fact that you have bought the line you would seem to have done is an indicator of the rather masterful job the re-writers of history have done over the last few decades.
John B- hard to disagree; my memories of the early ’70s and onwards in industry in the NW and Glasgow were of chaos. Unions bent on industrial suicide/socialist nirvana, employers like rabbits in the headlights. The oil crisis didn’t help either. At a time when leadership and inspiration was needed we had Heath.
Almost too late when MT arrived.
I was lucky enough later in the decade to get a spell in the USA to restore my hope.
Anna,
You write “People Can’ has gone bust providing excellent pensions to its (currently) 300 employees and former employees. They were offered the opportunity to take a cut in their pensions “. I’m afraid I can’t find any article where a pension cut is mentioned.
In my younger days, it was very rare to find charities which actually employed people, most charities relied on volunteers. The few that did employ staff never paid them particularly well as charitable work was considered a calling rather than employment.
Now charity seems to be a business “competing for local government contracts” and employing large numbers of staff. Surely this is not charity, this is business and should be run as a business and not have the advantages over any business operating in the same field.
Having read how major charities like the RSPCA spend their money on highly paid staff and publicity seeking prosecutions, I give any charitable donations that I can afford to local charities run mainly by volunteers where I can actually see where the money is going.
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