Charities
The newspaper report relates to the Aspinall Foundation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aspinall_Foundation].
“The charity that employs Carrie Johnson paid more than £150,000 to its chairman’s wife for interior design services last year.
The figure paid by the Aspinall Foundation equates to ten per cent of all donations received from public and corporate donors in 2020.
The organisation and its sister charity the Howletts Wild Animal Trust are already being investigated by the Charity Commission over their spending and financial management.”
The Daily Mail report triggers thoughts about several different areas: the present rotten government, headed by part-Jew, part-Levantine chancer, “Boris” Johnson and his Cabinet of clowns; the whole area of charities and “good causes”; and a few personal reminiscences.
The Aspinall Foundation was founded by the egregious John Aspinall [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aspinall_(zoo_owner)],
Aspinall’s mother was later married to Sir George Osborne [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_George_Francis_Osborne,_16th_Baronet], one of their 3 children being Sir Peter Osborne, who married a Hungarian-Jewish woman, that couple then having 4 children, one of whom is Gideon “George” Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer under David Cameron-Levita.
In other words, George Osborne is related to the present head of the Aspinall Foundation, Damian Aspinall (son of John Aspinall).
Around 1995, when I still lived in Little Venice, West London, I was acquainted with a lady of middle age called…well, let’s just call her by my nickname for her, “Mouse” (probably now-deceased). That lady had known John Aspinall’s brother or rather (I think) half-brother, rather well, and had stayed at the country house in Kent which also houses the zoo:
Over drinks at “the Bunker”, our name for the cellar bar at the Colonnade Hotel in Little Venice, I was told Mouse’s assessment of John Aspinall: ruthless, someone who much preferred animals to people, and who regarded the death of keepers at the zoo (five of whom were killed by the animals) as not very important; collateral damage, if you like.
Apparently, in his early days as an illegal or near-legal gaming operator, in the 1950s, Aspinall had more than once had to ask his wife for her jewellery, to cover outstanding gaming debts.
By 1960, though, Aspinall’s activities had brought fortune, if not always a good name.
The present Aspinall, Damian Aspinall, son of John, is extremely wealthy, and his wealth is said to have come from real estate operations unconnected, originally, with gambling as such: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damian_Aspinall.
Whatever may be said about the way in which the Aspinall Foundation is said to be run, the work it has done with wild animals is said to have been very good, and in some respects pioneering.
Judging from what I have both read and been told, it seems that both Aspinall father and Aspinall son could say, “I did it my way“…
What about charities generally? There has been much criticism over the years of the loose oversight exercised by the Charity Commission.
Charity was originally a matter for the individual or the (Roman Catholic) Church. Taxation scarcely came into the matter. Once England started to become a more secular society, in Tudor times, legislation had to regulate what was or was not a “charitable” activity. The Statute of Elizabeth [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_Uses_Act_1601] set down a list of “charitable” activities.
The Statute of Elizabeth was repealed in the 19thC, but the list of what is considered charitable still largely stands, clarified (or not) by case law precedent.
That is why, for example, the National Lottery of the UK has a fund not for “charity” but for “good causes”, a far wider ambit.
Many of the public concerns around charities have been caused by the way in which the larger charities soliciting money from the public pay their top-level employees. For many, it was shocking to learn that the husband of assassinated MP, Jo Cox, one Brendan Cox, was not only a sex pest and rapist or near-rapist [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5404241/Jo-Coxs-husband-admits-sex-pest-resigns.html] but was being paid something like £200,000 by the charity Save the Children, which churns out tearjerk TV ads and so on, which ads solicit donations and bequests from kind-hearted members of the public.
Indeed, Cox’s friend and fellow sex-pest, Justin Forsyth, who had been at the material times chief executive of Save the Children, had to resign from UNICEF after similar allegations emerged about him…see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_the_Children#Executive_Brendan_Cox_quits_after_women’s_complaints_of_’inappropriate_behaviour’. Forsyth had been paid about £300,000 p.a while heading Save the Children! Truly, for these bastards, charity begins at home!
There seems to be no good reason why such high salaries are paid. Brendan Cox, for example, had a rather modest academic and work background: see https://uk.linkedin.com/in/brendan-cox-433b364.
I was myself shocked to learn, many years ago, that the (effectively) fraudulent MP and expenses cheat, Derek Conway [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Conway], after he was first removed from Parliament in 1997, had not only been appointed as Chief Executive of the Cats’ Protection League [now Cats’ Protection], but also been paid, if memory serves, something like £150,000 a year, a not inconsiderable sum in the 1990s. I favour that charity, which like many others has collecting tins here and there, but some of these executives, in the British Army phrase, really “tear the arse out of” their appointments.
This is very negative to the image of all charities, and leads to public distrust, thus hampering the valuable work that so many charities do.
No-one expects executives of large charitable organizations to work for nothing, or for peanuts, but there is a case, as elsewhere in our society, for decent measure.
It may be time to look again at what should constitute a charity, and to regulate the big charities, especially, more closely.
Midday music
Liverpool bomb
Surprised this morning when watching a few minutes of BBC TV News (something I rarely bother with these days), and to hear the BBC reporter say that the (presumed) terrorist bomber in Liverpool had “sadly” died. What?!
No need, I think, for me to expand on my point.
Covid nonsense
While watching some news on TV briefly, also saw and heard that absurd van Tam person talking (seemingly endlessly) about “Covid” statistics. Something about how one group of people in one area had extremely high rates of hospitalization, “7.1% per 100,000 people“!
[7.1 or 7.1%?]
So, in a town such as Reading, of over 200,000 inhabitants, about 15 people might be hospitalized over the period mentioned (and almost all recover after a few days or a week or so).
[So either 15 people or 15,000 people! The latter would surely be absurd, nicht wahr?].
This is a public health problem that is nowhere near existential. Scrap all “measures”, fake laws, “rules” and all but mild advice.
Interesting discussion about British history
Tweets seen
Austria
This will only end when people, in numbers, not only start to say “NO!” but also start to punish the “authorities”, i.e. the System, and the “facilitators” of tyranny.
If even 10,000 Austrians were to go to the centre of Vienna, each armed with a mallet or hammer, and then were to break as many shop windows, and windows of government and police offices, as possible before being captured, that would make history. 10,000 freedom fighters, each breaking (say) 20 windows. 200,000 windows! Wien— Freiheit! Wien— das ist’s!!
Not that Austrians breaking windows will be sufficient, but it would be a start…
Late tweets
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 