A respected funeral director has been given a 15 month suspended sentence for stealing at least £14,000 donated to charities by grieving families.

Alison Pople deprived Help for Heroes, the NSPCC and a local hospice in Cheddar of monies she was entrusted to pass on, and covered her tracks by forging letters of thanks relating to 46 funerals she organised between 2011 and 2014. Pople claimed that her company was in financial difficulties at this time and that the money was to prop up the business and not for personal financial gain.

Judge David Ticehurst said that there was no benefit in sending Pople to jail, despite her abuse of trust, a decision that puzzled some of her victims attending court, who shook their heads. She has, however been ordered to pay back around £8,000 to some of the charities affected.

Following the needless death of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe last year by killing-for-fun American dentist Walter Palmer, another brave American hunter has sparked widespread revulsion after he filmed himself revelling in the pointless killing of a black bear with a spear and posted the footage on the internet.

Josh Bowmar (26) baited the animal with a barrel of food in a forest in Alberta, Canada in May and then impaled the bear from 12 yards away with a 7 ft spear carrying a 16 inch long blade and a camera. The bear stumbled off to die, for what some wildlife campaigners fear was up to 20 hours and Bowmar followed it to film himself gleefully celebrating over its body.

Bowmar’s articulate and intellectual contribution to civilised society was “. I drilled him perfect. I got mad penetration. No-one cares more about these animals than us hunters, especially me”.

Covert filming by animal rights charity Hillside Animal Sanctuary at the Staffordshire slaughterhouse of “high class” family butchers S. Bagshaw and Son resulted in the slaughterhouse being closed down last year and operative Anthony Bagshaw being jailed this month for mindless cruelty to the animals before slaughter.

Bagshaw, 36, was filmed kicking a pig in the face, throwing sheep onto a concrete floor, hitting sheep on the head with a metal stun gun and metal shackles and, with the help of two other men, crushing a pig behind a metal gate and causing it to scream in pain. Continue reading →

Large conservation and wildlife protection charities such as Friends of The Earth, World Wildlife Fund, World Animal Protection and Greenpeace are largely ignoring the spreading badger cull as they have become larger and more corporate in their structure and approach and less willing to take on the powerful farming lobby and Defra over the politically sensitive issue.

This is the view of Dominic Dyer, chief executive of the Badger Trust, expressed in a new paperback book published this month” Badgered to Death – the people and politics of the badger cull”. In this he says it will be unforgivable if the corporatisation of the once-respected campaigning charities over the last 40 years results in the loss of the badger species from our countryside.

The Charity Commission is being given new powers by the Cabinet Office to discipline charities and their trustees, planned to be fully operational by April next year.

The powers include a strengthening of disqualification procedures, the power to control fundraising and to make social investments, the issue of official warnings and the power to wind up a charity. Some of the changes, brought under the new Charities Act will be in place next month.

See the website for details

A 13 year old boy has taken the ultimate London Tube challenge – visiting every one of the 270 stations in a day to raise money for charity Bloodwise, after his 17 year old brother died of lymphoma in March.

Alasdair Clift started his marathon Tube ride in memory of his brother Adam at Chesham at 5.15 am on Monday August 1 and finished it at Heathrow Terminal 5 after midnight. Due to the kindness of sponsors the money raised boosted his original target of £100 to more than £11,000.