More than half of the suicides of children aged 10-14 are connected to bullying.

A study by charity Beatbullying.org also found that the usual venue for the persecution was school, with more cases of bullying by email, and on social networking sites coming to light.

The raising of VAT in January to 20% will hit charities, which cannot claw the money back on purchases.

The measure will generate more than £13 billion a year for the Treasury and cost charities £150 million.

The former financial director at the Foundation for Integrated Health, a charity founded by the Prince of Wales, has been convicted of theft, fraud and money-laundering and jailed for three years.

George Gray, 50, who was paid £80,000 per annum admitted stealing £250,000 over two and a half years from the charity, which was set up by the Prince in 1993 to champion the use of complementary therapies, and which has now closed.

Also jailed for three years was Moses Bushiri, 48, an asylum seeker from Birundi in central Africa, who swindled charity grant bodies out of £42,000.

Bushiri claimed the money was for his “refugee charity” and backers included the BBC’s Children in Need.

The RSPCA persecutes innocent animal owners to generate the publicity that keeps donations of £115 million a year rolling in.

This is a view of some critics who have noted a number of questionable actions launched by the RSPCA, specifically the confiscation of a herd of ponies from a retired builder, who then hanged himself, and the three-year pursuit through the courts of a horse breeder, which recently resulted in his acquittal and being told that he could leave the court with an untarnished reputation.

According to columnist Christopher Booker, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the charity is not the organisation it was and its donors should be told of its failings. A self-help group, the-shg.org, has been set up to advise on RSPCA persecution.

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home put down a third of the dogs they took in last year, most of those because they were bull terriers too dangerous to re-house.

The number of such dogs has increased nine-fold in the last fifteen years. In a recent successful prosecution by the RSPCA a man who threw a live fox he had trapped to his Staffordshire bull terrier was convicted of causing unnecessary suffering.

Free places given to poor pupils by private schools anxious to keep their lucrative charity status will be paid for by a hike in fees.

This is a warning issued by the Independent Association of Prep Schools which claims that most schools operate with “tiny margins” and that the Charity Commission, which insists on free places for poor pupils for the schools to enjoy charity status, “has to get into the real world”.

Focussing on technology for the not-for profit sector the new nfp technology exhibition takes place on Tuesday 7 September at the Business Design Centre, London.

Registration is free and there is a programme of free 50-60 minute seminars, including subjects such as website hosting for fundraising events, using digital video to increase donations and mobile applications.

www.conferencehouse.co.uk

Those who feel strongly against the slaughter of seal pups in Canada should stop buying Canadian seafood and should not visit Canada until the cull is banned.

This is the advice of charity Respect for Animals which points out that more than 1 million seal pups have been killed in the last five years and encourages people to write to the Canadian High Commissioner in London with their objections.

Testicles of male pups are highly prized in China as an aphrodisiac.