A charitable scheme to supply cars for disabled people in exchange for their state disability allowance has been slammed by MPs after it emerged that its chief executive was taking £1.7 million a year out of the scheme.

This was the “totally unacceptable” salary paid to Mike Betts the CEO of Motability Operations, a taxpayer-funded monopoly organisation with no competitors that pays some of its other directors £1+ million salaries and allows banks to rake off £700,000 a year from their involvement. Motability is also hoarding £2.4billion of public money and Betts lives in a £5million flat overlooking Tower Bridge.

Initial investigations into the greed at Motability were carried out by the Daily Mail and the firm is now being probed by the National Audit Office (NAO).

A new government scheme has been launched to kill badgers, a protected species, in areas of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) outbreaks, even where it is unlikely that badgers given the disease by infected cattle are re-infecting the cattle. Infected cattle moved by farmers from one farm to another are usually the reason for badgers and deer catching the disease.

To encourage the killing the government’s Natural England office is offering shooters, who can also be farmers, up to £50 per badger corpse.

The scheme has been described by the RSPCA as “inhumane, ineffective and costly” and by the Wildlife Trusts, which has banned the culling on its 2,300 nature reserves, as “scientifically unsound”. The Badger Trust also describes the cull as “flawed science” and is supporting a High Court challenge to the government in the form of a judicial review.

A jail sentence of one year has been given to a charity finance officer who stole more than £53,000.

Gemma Mason, 36, bought more than 1,000 items from Amazon using the credit card issued to her by NSA Afan, a community regeneration group. The items included luxury handbags, and shoes, fake tan, diamantes and frilly underwear.

Admitting fraud the mother of two from Neath, West Glamorgan was told by Judge Geraint Walters “This was a serious breach of trust”.

The Church of England has been accused of hypocrisy for attacking greedy City bonus cultures after it has emerged that their charity investment manager was paid a bonus of more than £250,000 last year.

Tom Joy, 45, was paid a total of more than £500,000 by the Church Commissioners for England, making him one of the highest-paid charity executives in the UK.

The charity sector has suffered considerable and probably permanent damage due to the recent slew of sleaze allegations aimed at a few large organisations.

In Haiti it has been reported that some Oxfam staff organised orgies in a villa in Port au Prince, with women offered aid for sex after the 2010 earthquake there in the “culture of entitlement” that apparently existed at Oxfam. As a result Haiti has banned Oxfam GB while it investigates the allegations, including those claiming that some of the prostitutes were 14 years old. The age of consent in Haiti is 18. Continue reading →

In the wake of the collapse of the President’s Club after a stag event at which female hostesses were groped and propositioned and sex workers were said to circulate, Great Ormond Street Hospital claimed that it would pay back charitable donations made by the club, thought to total more than £500,000.

This was because they did not wish their good name to be associated with the sleazy goings-on. However since then they have paused to reconsider their position in the light of donor threats to withdraw support and questions such as why innocent and sick children should suffer because of the scandal.

The “dirty money” dilemma is certainly one classic one faced by the sector, and it will be interesting to see how GOSH resolves it (reader’s views welcome).

The management of the Royal Albert Hall is to face an overdue and judge-led inquiry later this year into why the charity allows its trustees to own seats privately and then to profit from selling tickets for them at significantly inflated prices.

The inquiry will establish whether or not the considerable private gain is acceptable for trustees controlling the hall. If it is not then the Charity Commission has the power to replace the trustees and appoint their own independent ones to run the hall.

The number of advertisements for betting firms during sports matches, and the number of sports pundits extolling their products is worrying gambling charities which are concerned about the effect of these items in hooking children into gambling.

Since the last Labour government relaxed laws governing the broadcast of ads encouraging betting the number seen by children has tripled, with many ads urging bets on football matches screened before the 9.00pm watershed.

The other problem is the number of sports pundits who now act as ambassadors, or paid pushers, to betting firms, with Alan Shearer pushing Coral and Jermaine Jenas pushing Unibet. Meanwhile Robbie Savage promotes William Hill on Twitter and Michael Vaughan promotes bookmaker Mr Green.

Some football clubs themselves have ads for gambling on football shirts sold to under-18’s.

Figures produced in 2016 by charity GambleAware show that problem gamblers cost the UK taxpayer up to £1.2 billion a year. Betting firms are the biggest suppliers of gifts to UK MP’s.

The chief executive of an animal shelter who plundered donations of £640,000 in nine years to fund his online gambling habit has been jailed for five years.

Simon Price, 53, diverted cash from legacies left to Birmingham Dogs Home to pay for his losses on his Betfair online account. He also raised money with fake invoices from solicitors, construction companies and marketing companies. He admitted multiple counts of fraud by abuse of position. Sentencing Price Judge Patrick Thomas QC told him that his crimes, “while in the grip of a gambling addiction” had “weakened public confidence in the work of the dog’s home. Continue reading →