[News] Oxfam sex abuse scandal

cunning fergus · Feb 13, 2018

Herr Tubthumper said:
And it’s been hijacked by some to further personal political agendas against others.

It’s not often I agree with you HT but in this case you are absolutely on the money.

The posters on this thread making points about how there is too much reporting of this matter or that the political aspects of this case are more important than investigating child abuse and rape within an institution that receives millions of pounds of U.K. and EU taxpayers money are at best misguided, and at worst extremists.

Like with the exposure of child abuse and rape of thousands of children in places like Rotherham and Rochdale, the fate of the poor and vulnerable appear to be of less value than the careers of politicians and the egos of the management of institutions.

Playing down any cases of systemic child abuse and rape for political agendas is risible. It’s good that you recognise it too.

Dick Swiveller · Feb 13, 2018

London Irish said:
I had no idea that NSC's resident bunch of right-wing swivellers considered charities "left-wing"? I guess compared to them probably everyone from Pam Ayres to the Krankies are too

Oi. I might be a Dick but I ain't right wing.

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Hamilton · Feb 13, 2018

cunning fergus said:
You said your “key concern is how this case and this charity will be used as a political football to advance the agendas of others”.

In light of the damning testimony by Helen Evans on C4 I still suggest your key concern is unfounded. You are making the proposition that somehow the abuse of children in the U.K. or rape of women in the 3rd world by Oxfam employees is secondary to your political sensibilities.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...pens-allegations-sex-aid-abuse-charity-shops/

Frankly I think you have you priorities wrong, but maybe you are such a bigot that even when faced with the undeniable facts of systemic abuse and shamefully weak governance in Oxfam you think it’s the media/Tories/JRM or Brexit that is the problem.

Blimey. What wild conclusions you reach.

I will be interested in understanding what background checks are undertaken by all other charities as this case unravels. From personal experience I know of one charity where no background checks are undertaken, probably to save money and ensure funds are directed towards recipients. This does not make it the right thing to do.

Looking back, I got my first job when I was 12 years old. At that time there were definitely no background checks. I wonder what the rates of abuse were like then as opposed to today. Were they markedly higher? No matter what, any policy that reduces risk is a good one.

Postings abroad are fraught with danger. It’s clear there are predatory people out there in an unchecked market. Just inside Oxfam?

As for your assertion that these undeniable facts in some way I link to Jacob Rees Mogg etc., then you’ve totally lost me. What has it got to do with the likes of him and where have I said that it does?

The Oxfam case, and Helen Evan’s story, may well be the tip of a larger iceberg that could extend to other charities. Have these charities willfully engaged in some sort of organised predatory behaviour. I doubt it very much.

As mentioned, this case is totally unacceptable, as is your gleeful posting on a subject that should be treated with more respect. However, now I know you are a champions of risk assessment policy making, I will look out carefully for your future posts on the subject.

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Live by the sea · Feb 13, 2018

Sadly not that surprised, I wouldn’t also be surprised if there were similar issues with other big charities. Some of them like Red Cross have become very politicised over the last few years, handpicking where their attention goes and it’s not always to the most needy

Thunder Bolt · Feb 13, 2018

I've copied and pasted this from Peter Kyle's (MP for Hove Lab) Facebook page. It makes for very interesting reading.

https://www.facebook.com/hoveandportslade/posts/908862319287471

A Word On Oxfam

I’ve spoken a lot in the media these past few days because there’s a lot I wanted to say about aid and development. Most of you know that I was an aid worker myself for almost a decade, and then completed a doctorate on development at Sussex Univeristy. It’s something a care a lot about.

From my experience the vast majority of frontline aid workers are extraordinarily professional and caring, choosing to put their expertise and experience to use in the most difficult situations. Please, don’t ever forget that.

There’s another side that I saw too though. In some truly extreme situations, such as in sudden refugee crises, humanitarian disasters, or areas of conflict and war, there is chaos, stress, and lawlessness that is really hard to imagine if you’ve not experienced it. Our job as aid workers was to bring stability and security to people who had lost everything, including their human dignity.

A small number of dysfunctional people, who probably could never really survive a steady job back home, seem to thrive amidst the chaos and dysfunction of a disaster. I noticed some of them travelled from one disaster to another and rose quite high in the ranks. They were a nightmare to deal with, unreliable, and made very poor decisions.

I remember a doctor for a well known large charity coming up to the small team I was with, wearing a bloodstained doctors uniform, and said “it’s boring here you’ll hate it. You should get over to Asia that’s where the blood and guts are”.

We were standing in a refugee camp with over a thousand destitute women and children, many with gynaecological problems caused by the rape and abuse they experienced as they fled (rape was used as a weapon during the Balkan war), and very few knew if their husbands and adult male children were alive or dead as they had either been detained or remained to fight.

We stood there stunned at the sight and words of this grotesque man. I would never want someone I loved being seen by him, so why should people who were among the world’s most vulnerable have to turn to him? They deserved the best not this horrid little man.

People like him should never be working with vulnerable people and aid agencies need to get better at weeding them out and getting better suited people in. It’s tough. In this country we struggle to get great maths teachers into challenging schools, so imagine the difficulty of getting brilliant doctors, who might have families and dependents of their own, to go to extremely dangerous and life-threatening places to practice medicine.

There’s another issue I want to mention. The aid industry has become extraordinarily competitive. It has driven some to become territorial and secretive in order to fight off challenges to its work and funding.

A team I was with once took an incredible unit into a refugee camp that could shower 1,000 people twice a week in privacy. Imagine how important that is to life in a camp with no running water. When we arrived a director of a famous charity came running over and said “you can’t have that here, take it away, we are the lead charity in this camp and we won’t have something with your logo on it in case tv crews film here”.

I promise you, this is true. So I explained we didn’t care about logos, we cared about helping people, and suggested he put his organisation’s logos on instead. Out came a satellite phone, a call to head office, and we got the ok to plaster our amazing shower unit with their logos.

I still can’t imagine what would posses someone to stand amidst a refugee camp full of desperate, lonely, and scared people and seek to deny them health and hygiene because of a bloody logo. Things were getting out of hand, some had lost sight of their true humanitarian purpose.

There’s a lot more I could say, but you get the picture. I never became cynical because I saw so many lives transformed and I saw first hand just what can be achieved through sensitive and professional aid work. Because of Britain’s aid and disaster support there are thousands and thousands of people alive and prospering who would otherwise be impoverished or dead, so please don’t become cynical too.

In all my time I never saw or heard rumours about the criminal activity being uncovered today. It disgusts me to hear it though.

Heartbreakingly, sexual exploitation and rape of children can exist in any organisation if we do not proactively protect young people and have proper systems and procedures in place. Jimmy Saville taught us that. So if it happens here where we have a mature civil society and a world class police force, imagine how difficult it is to get this right in a war zone or disaster area.

But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.

Aid agencies and government must work to change culture to become more open, cooperative, and sharing of best practice. What is tragic about Oxfam’s failure to act is that as well as the tragedy of already vulnerable people becoming victims, predators and corrupt people have escaped justice. And also, keeping it hushed up has denied other organisation the opportunity to learn from the mistakes that led to this happening.

I fear that threats to cut Oxfam’s funding will only exacerbate this. The message to other organisations is ‘if you have this problem and make it public we will cut your funding’, and the people who will suffer most from funding cuts are already damaged communities being supported by the good work being done.

Government much act as a mature partner. We need to know everything and we need to learn from it. In the future I believe the public will forgive organisation who own up to mistakes providing they are open and honest and prove they have learned from it, but they will not forgive cover-ups and hiding the truth.

Aid does work, it really does. Tonight I did a tv debate with a UKIP assembly member who thinks we should stop aid. I simply pointed out that his world view of ‘stop engaging with the world’ is dangerous and costly. If we don’t try to help solve problems where they exist, believe me in time they will land on our own shores and cost us even more.

Thanks in large part to Britain, 8 out of the 15 fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa. Also in Africa, deaths from malaria and communicable diseases are plummeting, as is infant mortality and death from famine and war. Education, life expectancy, and economic prosperity is all rising. Britain hasn’t had to intervene with our military in Africa since Sierra Leone. And the Balkans, where I spent a lot of time, is now unrecognisable to how I remember it as war ravaged and desperate.

I will be pushing as hard as I can for reform of our large aid agencies, but I will defend what they do and the work of all decent aid workers with everything I’ve got. Former aid workers like me, and many hundreds of brilliant ones out there now in the frontline have been bitterly let down. For them and the thousands of desperately vulnerable people who look to us for help, we must get this right. And we will. All the best, Peter

vegster · Feb 13, 2018

The Fifth Column said:
Given the numerous historical sexual misdemeanours of politicians I really don't think they can take the moral high ground here. Actually can anyone? After all the real headline is, "Men in shagging prostitutes incident while they were away in a foreign country", hardly the news of the century is it.

It is as ever about power and control, it seems that bad people manage to get themselves in to a position high enough to abuse whatever power they have.

cunning fergus · Feb 13, 2018

Hamilton said:
Blimey. What wild conclusions you reach.

I will be interested in understanding what background checks are undertaken by all other charities as this case unravels. From personal experience I know of one charity where no background checks are undertaken, probably to save money and ensure funds are directed towards recipients. This does not make it the right thing to do.

Looking back, I got my first job when I was 12 years old. At that time there were definitely no background checks. I wonder what the rates of abuse were like then as opposed to today. Were they markedly higher? No matter what, any policy that reduces risk is a good one.

Postings abroad are fraught with danger. It’s clear there are predatory people out there in an unchecked market. Just inside Oxfam?

As for your assertion that these undeniable facts in some way I link to Jacob Rees Mogg etc., then you’ve totally lost me. What has it got to do with the likes of him and where have I said that it does?

The Oxfam case, and Helen Evan’s story, may well be the tip of a larger iceberg that could extend to other charities. Have these charities willfully engaged in some sort of organised predatory behaviour. I doubt it very much.

As mentioned, this case is totally unacceptable, as is your gleeful posting on a subject that should be treated with more respect. However, now I know you are a champions of risk assessment policy making, I will look out carefully for your future posts on the subject.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Explain to me what the wild conclusions I have reached are?

I have merely responded to your post in which you stated your “key concern” about this scandal was how it would be used by others to further their agendas. Anybody who doesn’t think that the “key concern” here is either getting justice or helping victims is taking the piss. And you have the neck to accuse me of not treating this matter with respect.

This episode merely highlights what you are, which is a political extremist that even in the light of wholesale governance failings in Oxfam to protect women and children from rape and sexual abuse, you are more concerned about the political fallout.

Furthermore, you accuse me of bringing Mogg into the frame, and yet who is it you are referring to when you refer to those seeking to make political capital out of the matter. Sure you will say now it’s not Mogg, but we know what you mean.......after all it’s your “key concern”.

As for me posting gleefully, what a piece of work you are, if you didn’t post utter shit, I wouldn’t have needed to school you. Just because you are now upset because you’ve been shown up, doesn’t mean I’m happy.......I actually feel pity for you that your mind works the way it does.

cunning fergus · Feb 13, 2018

Thunder Bolt said:
I've copied and pasted this from Peter Kyle's (MP for Hove Lab) Facebook page. It makes for very interesting reading.

https://www.facebook.com/hoveandportslade/posts/908862319287471

A Word On Oxfam

I’ve spoken a lot in the media these past few days because there’s a lot I wanted to say about aid and development. Most of you know that I was an aid worker myself for almost a decade, and then completed a doctorate on development at Sussex Univeristy. It’s something a care a lot about.

From my experience the vast majority of frontline aid workers are extraordinarily professional and caring, choosing to put their expertise and experience to use in the most difficult situations. Please, don’t ever forget that.

There’s another side that I saw too though. In some truly extreme situations, such as in sudden refugee crises, humanitarian disasters, or areas of conflict and war, there is chaos, stress, and lawlessness that is really hard to imagine if you’ve not experienced it. Our job as aid workers was to bring stability and security to people who had lost everything, including their human dignity.

A small number of dysfunctional people, who probably could never really survive a steady job back home, seem to thrive amidst the chaos and dysfunction of a disaster. I noticed some of them travelled from one disaster to another and rose quite high in the ranks. They were a nightmare to deal with, unreliable, and made very poor decisions.

I remember a doctor for a well known large charity coming up to the small team I was with, wearing a bloodstained doctors uniform, and said “it’s boring here you’ll hate it. You should get over to Asia that’s where the blood and guts are”.

We were standing in a refugee camp with over a thousand destitute women and children, many with gynaecological problems caused by the rape and abuse they experienced as they fled (rape was used as a weapon during the Balkan war), and very few knew if their husbands and adult male children were alive or dead as they had either been detained or remained to fight.

We stood there stunned at the sight and words of this grotesque man. I would never want someone I loved being seen by him, so why should people who were among the world’s most vulnerable have to turn to him? They deserved the best not this horrid little man.

People like him should never be working with vulnerable people and aid agencies need to get better at weeding them out and getting better suited people in. It’s tough. In this country we struggle to get great maths teachers into challenging schools, so imagine the difficulty of getting brilliant doctors, who might have families and dependents of their own, to go to extremely dangerous and life-threatening places to practice medicine.

There’s another issue I want to mention. The aid industry has become extraordinarily competitive. It has driven some to become territorial and secretive in order to fight off challenges to its work and funding.

A team I was with once took an incredible unit into a refugee camp that could shower 1,000 people twice a week in privacy. Imagine how important that is to life in a camp with no running water. When we arrived a director of a famous charity came running over and said “you can’t have that here, take it away, we are the lead charity in this camp and we won’t have something with your logo on it in case tv crews film here”.

I promise you, this is true. So I explained we didn’t care about logos, we cared about helping people, and suggested he put his organisation’s logos on instead. Out came a satellite phone, a call to head office, and we got the ok to plaster our amazing shower unit with their logos.

I still can’t imagine what would posses someone to stand amidst a refugee camp full of desperate, lonely, and scared people and seek to deny them health and hygiene because of a bloody logo. Things were getting out of hand, some had lost sight of their true humanitarian purpose.

There’s a lot more I could say, but you get the picture. I never became cynical because I saw so many lives transformed and I saw first hand just what can be achieved through sensitive and professional aid work. Because of Britain’s aid and disaster support there are thousands and thousands of people alive and prospering who would otherwise be impoverished or dead, so please don’t become cynical too.

In all my time I never saw or heard rumours about the criminal activity being uncovered today. It disgusts me to hear it though.

Heartbreakingly, sexual exploitation and rape of children can exist in any organisation if we do not proactively protect young people and have proper systems and procedures in place. Jimmy Saville taught us that. So if it happens here where we have a mature civil society and a world class police force, imagine how difficult it is to get this right in a war zone or disaster area.

But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.

Aid agencies and government must work to change culture to become more open, cooperative, and sharing of best practice. What is tragic about Oxfam’s failure to act is that as well as the tragedy of already vulnerable people becoming victims, predators and corrupt people have escaped justice. And also, keeping it hushed up has denied other organisation the opportunity to learn from the mistakes that led to this happening.

I fear that threats to cut Oxfam’s funding will only exacerbate this. The message to other organisations is ‘if you have this problem and make it public we will cut your funding’, and the people who will suffer most from funding cuts are already damaged communities being supported by the good work being done.

Government much act as a mature partner. We need to know everything and we need to learn from it. In the future I believe the public will forgive organisation who own up to mistakes providing they are open and honest and prove they have learned from it, but they will not forgive cover-ups and hiding the truth.

Aid does work, it really does. Tonight I did a tv debate with a UKIP assembly member who thinks we should stop aid. I simply pointed out that his world view of ‘stop engaging with the world’ is dangerous and costly. If we don’t try to help solve problems where they exist, believe me in time they will land on our own shores and cost us even more.

Thanks in large part to Britain, 8 out of the 15 fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa. Also in Africa, deaths from malaria and communicable diseases are plummeting, as is infant mortality and death from famine and war. Education, life expectancy, and economic prosperity is all rising. Britain hasn’t had to intervene with our military in Africa since Sierra Leone. And the Balkans, where I spent a lot of time, is now unrecognisable to how I remember it as war ravaged and desperate.

I will be pushing as hard as I can for reform of our large aid agencies, but I will defend what they do and the work of all decent aid workers with everything I’ve got. Former aid workers like me, and many hundreds of brilliant ones out there now in the frontline have been bitterly let down. For them and the thousands of desperately vulnerable people who look to us for help, we must get this right. And we will. All the best, Peter

Pretty damning stuff overall, and right up there is this point “The aid industry has become extraordinarily competitive. It has driven some to become territorial and secretive in order to fight off challenges to its work and funding.”

It seems to me that the likes of Oxfam are uneccesary intermediaries in the delivery of aid, it’s about time the middle man was cut out. The Govt should consider directing the monies straight to the countries they are seeking to aid and setting up agencies there, that are completely staffed by locals. Oxfam in receipt of millions of pounds of UK taxpayers money and similarly millions from EU taxpayers (no doubt that is double bubble for UK taxpayers) which evidently funds their largesse at the expense of the needy.

It is evident from some of the noise in this case that westerners rocking up in land cruisers and staying in relative luxury and raping the locals creates discontent with the locals, the current model is broken, time for change.

The minority always ruin it for the majority don’t they?

Hamilton · Feb 13, 2018

cunning fergus said:
Explain to me what the wild conclusions I have reached are?

I have merely responded to your post in which you stated your “key concern” about this scandal was how it would be used by others to further their agendas. Anybody who doesn’t think that the “key concern” here is either getting justice or helping victims is taking the piss. And you have the neck to accuse me of not treating this matter with respect.

This episode merely highlights what you are, which is a political extremist that even in the light of wholesale governance failings in Oxfam to protect women and children from rape and sexual abuse, you are more concerned about the political fallout.

Furthermore, you accuse me of bringing Mogg into the frame, and yet who is it you are referring to when you refer to those seeking to make political capital out of the matter. Sure you will say now it’s not Mogg, but we know what you mean.......after all it’s your “key concern”.

As for me posting gleefully, what a piece of work you are, if you didn’t post utter shit, I wouldn’t have needed to school you. Just because you are now upset because you’ve been shown up, doesn’t mean I’m happy.......I actually feel pity for you that your mind works the way it does.

You are attempting to damn an entire sector by using this appalling incident to further you own agenda.

I really doubt whether anyone on this board could be schooled by you as your posts are unbelievably thin and based upon the fact that you have at last found something you can attack that in your mind belongs to a political spectrum to which you do not subscribe. As others have pointed out, this is apolitical. However, you are proving my original point by using it for political point scoring.

Perhaps you should spend some time reflecting on the victims - direct and indirect - of this incident. There are very hardworking people inside the charity sector that will feel damned tonight, and that damnation will be heightened by the rabid mouthing of critics intent on making capital from this.

If only your ‘outrage’ was genuine and put to good use. As I have consistently pointed out, what has happened in unacceptable.

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Hamilton · Feb 13, 2018

cunning fergus said:
Pretty damning stuff overall, and right up there is this point “The aid industry has become extraordinarily competitive. It has driven some to become territorial and secretive in order to fight off challenges to its work and funding.”

It seems to me that the likes of Oxfam are uneccesary intermediaries in the delivery of aid, it’s about time the middle man was cut out. The Govt should consider directing the monies straight to the countries they are seeking to aid and setting up agencies there, that are completely staffed by locals. Oxfam in receipt of millions of pounds of UK taxpayers money and similarly millions from EU taxpayers (no doubt that is double bubble for UK taxpayers) which evidently funds their largesse at the expense of the needy.

It is evident from some of the noise in this case that westerners rocking up in land cruisers and staying in relative luxury and raping the locals creates discontent with the locals, the current model is broken, time for change.

The minority always ruin it for the majority don’t they?

Let me get this 100% right. You think that the UK Government is best placed to direct all overseas aid. Just for the record, that is what you are saying. UK Government is going to recruit and pay for all the experts and deliver all the funding where it is needed. That is your policy idea, yes?

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carlzeiss · Feb 17, 2018

Murdered MP Jo Cox's husband steps down from charity roles over 'mistakes I made several years ago'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...d-brendan-cox-step-down-charity-a8215951.html

cunning fergus · Feb 18, 2018

carlzeiss said:
Murdered MP Jo Cox's husband steps down from charity roles over 'mistakes I made several years ago'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...d-brendan-cox-step-down-charity-a8215951.html

Proof if needed that in the end your past will catch up with you; as I explained in a previous post this was all reported years before his wife was murdered, and I was always surprised that he projected such a saintly figure in the aftermath.

Still, with his admission and the resignations of others in the charity sector (no doubt with more to come) this particular swamp is finally being drained, so to speak. I’m sure the #metoo campaign will crank into gear in the next few days and Jess Phillips et al will deliver a ferocious speech on behalf of the victims of the rape and sexual abuse that is evidently rife in some mainstream British charities.

It will also be interesting now to see if the charities implicated will compensate the survivors of this developing scandal, money no doubt that should have been used to help the needy in the poorest countries around the world. Maybe the Directors and Non Execs will sacrifice their pension funds as a gesture of accountability and contrition?

No doubt for many with a more extremist disposition it will be more important that news such as this is covered up, I suspect they will be spending a more few weeks with their mattresses propped up against the radiator yet.

The stinkers that they are.

Chicken Run · Feb 18, 2018

Brendan Cox since his wife has died has whored himself to the media as holier than thou, now look at him, not so smug now, poor Jo would be horrified [emoji853]

Harry Wilson's tackle · Feb 18, 2018

Hamilton said:
Let me get this 100% right. You think that the UK Government is best placed to direct all overseas aid. Just for the record, that is what you are saying. UK Government is going to recruit and pay for all the experts and deliver all the funding where it is needed. That is your policy idea, yes?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think you are wasting your time with your correspondent. He seems to start out with a stance against certain 'types' then, without any evidence for this, uses the 'fact' to inform some other unfounded stance. He then makes vague proposals. Then, when called out for all this strangeness, he asks for evidence, denigrates his detractors, changes the subject, then starts all over again. I think this is an examle of someone bending the facts about anything and everything to fit with one's preconceptions. I hope he has the good sense to disregard this post, or block me, but if not he'll no doubt accuse me of denying the facts about something (making assumptions about my stance, and inventing discourse that I haven't propounded). He's doing exactly the same to you. It is most peculiar.

Cheshire Cat · Feb 18, 2018

I still took two bags of old clothes to the local Oxfam shop yesterday :angel:

alfredmizen · Feb 18, 2018

carlzeiss said:
Murdered MP Jo Cox's husband steps down from charity roles over 'mistakes I made several years ago'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...d-brendan-cox-step-down-charity-a8215951.html

The blokes a wrong'un , hez admitted to tomming about during his marriage as well , predictably little reaction from the left here and elsewhere.

cunning fergus · Feb 18, 2018

Harry Wilson's tackle said:
I think you are wasting your time with your correspondent. He seems to start out with a stance against certain 'types' then, without any evidence for this, uses the 'fact' to inform some other unfounded stance. He then makes vague proposals. Then, when called out for all this strangeness, he asks for evidence, denigrates his detractors, changes the subject, then starts all over again. I think this is an examle of someone bending the facts about anything and everything to fit with one's preconceptions. I hope he has the good sense to disregard this post, or block me, but if not he'll no doubt accuse me of denying the facts about something (making assumptions about my stance, and inventing discourse that I haven't propounded). He's doing exactly the same to you. It is most peculiar.

On the contrary, David Lammy MP on question time made exactly the same point I was making on question time this week. I would not always agree with him on his Tory based political ideology, but on this mater he is on the money.

The fact is that the organisational model that is now the orthodox approach for how UK charities manage and facilitate the delivery of aid to poor counties needs to be reviewed urgently. The model we have where rich white westerners descend into the third world and set up their mini fiefdoms operating outside the law within these countries has to end.

There is nothing to prevent those countries that receive aid taking a far more active role in distributing aid, locals can be employed far cheaper than sounding out legions of well connected middle class Herberts and Henriettas to perform the same role, and the charities, if needed can operate on a more consultancy basis.

Medical related charities are evidently different, but the likes of Oxfam are not doing anything locals would not be able to do.

This episode must change the way Charities operate, the victims deserve better..........I know some don’t have them as their key concern but they are quite simply wrong.

LlcoolJ · Feb 18, 2018

Harry Wilson's tackle said:
I think you are wasting your time with your correspondent. He seems to start out with a stance against certain 'types' then, without any evidence for this, uses the 'fact' to inform some other unfounded stance. He then makes vague proposals. Then, when called out for all this strangeness, he asks for evidence, denigrates his detractors, changes the subject, then starts all over again. I think this is an examle of someone bending the facts about anything and everything to fit with one's preconceptions. I hope he has the good sense to disregard this post, or block me, but if not he'll no doubt accuse me of denying the facts about something (making assumptions about my stance, and inventing discourse that I haven't propounded). He's doing exactly the same to you. It is most peculiar.

Absolutely correct. A very strange individual and more than a bit Glenn Hoddle.

Jim D · Feb 18, 2018

Cheshire Cat said:
I still took two bags of old clothes to the local Oxfam shop yesterday

We take ours to cats protection. Good luck to any of their workers trying to bribe mog for 'favours'

Publius Ovidius · Feb 18, 2018

Cheshire Cat said:
I still took two bags of old clothes to the local Oxfam shop yesterday

....and so everybody should. Charitys still prove an outlet for aid and compassion that a government whatever it's political leanings will not do.

If we all suddenly stopped giving to charity shops etc, it is the very people that most need our help that will suffer from the actions of the very few.

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