Charity Commission

Having just paid $900 for a brand new Neilson surfboard I was keen to get out in the sea at the weekend before the predicted cold spell set in. The low winds left me stranded some way out and I was just day dreaming and hanging off the end of the board when a large dark shadow appeared under the board !! Not that unusual on the North Shore but still a shock when it happens, especially as we watched Jaws at the week-end to celebrate some anniversary of the making of the film. Still I got back in one piece so maybe the gods were with me! As sharks apparently kill only 20 or so people each year and we kill 60 million of them maybe its only fair if they scare the sh*t out of people from time to time.

Talking of sharks, in the Pom press at the moment (not mentioning the cricket) a recently retiring top cop calls the last Home Secretary a “back stabbing bully”. Evidence of this at the Charity Commission when the previous Chief Commissioner, Jon Stoker, came to the end of his contract. An intellectual (a Cambridge Graduate) and an able and will liked man ( quiet a dish too), could normally have expected to stay on for another term. However the current Chief Commissioner, then one of his staff, went to her friend the Home Secretary and said that either Stoker had to go or she would resign in a great fuss. In a previous job she had presented Blunkett with a guide dog so maybe he thought he owed her something. So after 30 years of public service Stoker was asked to leave and the new lot took over …..

I stayed longer than expected in the Blue Mountains, camping and horse riding. It so lovely this time of year, cool and fresh. Back today for the Manly 150th celebrations and hoping to get a place on one of the boats going out to the Sound. Again it is going to be a lovely day, up in the mid 70’s, so may chance the new bikini I bought this week. If I can find my camera I will try and post a photo!

You know what its like when your parents get to a certain age and your dad wants to dance at parties or your mum starts bopping about in the supermarket to the canned music? Well back at the Charity Commission (which coincidentally is also 150 years old) the trendy Chief Exec is about to introduce a new logo. Most organisations have a logo that says something about it. The Charity Commission is confused so of course it will have three ! A photo of a bloke wearing a T shirt (with arms blacked out to make him more ethnic), a picture of a shadow of someone surrendering (hands up!), and a picture of a busy train station. No-one knows what this is all about and the trendy chief exec is too busy trying to be happening to realise how foolish all this looks. The plan is that staff will use whatever logo they want each time they send a letter. This way charities can be permanently confused about who they are dealing with. Also remembering that this is a government department how is it going to look sending a charity a letter saying it is going to be investigated if the logo is a bloke with a t shirt or a shadow with its hands up?

You might well ask where Mr Trendy’s boss is when all this is being set up ? Spending the last month working at home of course, even though she apparently is in Canada !

I have asked my friend at the Commission for a copy of the logos. If she can send, I will post them

Up early today as going off the the blue mountains for a couple of days. Have had some interesting comments direct from people who work for the charity commission, so more on my return. One girl was wondering why a small man needed to use his position to bully staff at work and why he had to put his picture on every departmental publication... My correspondent said he was a little pr**k.... perhaps they mean has...! ZP

Ps

Come on you staff and charity workers, what do you think ??

Meeting people running the Charities Commission was bit of an eye opener. You might understand why a disabled home secretary (blind) wanted to appoint a woman with a degenerative brain disease as the chief commissioner(a lovely woman too though a bit flaky)but why appoint an accountant with no experience managing a large organisation as a chief executive? Being a professional he of course then appoints a lawyer with no experience of management as director of operations, and he appoints another lawyer, again with no management experience as being responsible for all the staff giving services to charities. How is that going to work ?

The chief executive is a little angry man of 50 who comes to work on a scooter (not a cool vespa but the sort we had when we were kids that you push along with your foot). I met him twice briefly when in london but spoke more to one of his staff. More about him later....

I recently visited the UK, having spent some years there growing up. Whilst there I thought that I would look up an English organisation, the Charity Commission. My friend's uncle used to run it and with 185,000 charities in England an important organisation. I found it in chaos; with the lunatics truly having taken over the asylum. Working for a charity on the North Shore I thought that I should write about what I found and ask people in the Commission and English charities to add their bit.