Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Oxfam overload...


Some defence of Oxfam...and some not. First the defence: despite Guido's post today on the official Oxfam staff training guide on sexual exploitation, Oxfam do make it very clear - on pages 126 and 135 of the guide that most important of their non-negotiable principles in the Sexual Conduct guidelines Code of conduct are the following:

"To clarify: you must not demand or accept sex or sexual contact in return for goods or services from you or Oxfam." Clear. So, as Guido asks, is it really impossible to have a no tolerance policy for this?

Chez Stumbling and Mumbling believes that there are certain mechanisms at work in this and similar situations: ego-depletion, moral self-licensing and - whereby organisations can 'drift away from their original purposes' - the iron law of oligarchy.

Of course, much of the hoo-ha is political (of course!) but we've known for decades that Oxfam is "Leftist, anti-British, anti-capitalist and corrupt".[Conservative Woman]** It turns out that the Oxfam trustee Caroline Thomson, who made a 'full and unqualified apology' is an ex-BBC grandee who received - only 6 years ago - a nigh-on 1 million dollar pay-off when her bid to become director general floundered as 'she was dragged into the controversy over the cover-up of the activities of paedophile Jimmy Savile...and hence - of course - into a row over excessive pay-offs for BBC executives! [Daily Mail].

It's the all-too-common merry-go-round of BBC-quango-charidee-New Labour-EU gravy train once again! Her father was a Labour MP (then SDP), later made a Lord. She joined the BBC; husband political activist and very close friend of Peter Mandelson; he co-authored The Blair Revolution; a policy adviser to Blair and aide in No 10 for seven years; embroiled in Lobbygate [remember that? Only one year into the New Labour disaster but still several years before any UK MSM really took them to task] ; later an adviser to European Commission and now "having been ennobled for long service as a Blairite ultra is a key figure in the Lords in the battle against Brexit." They are an archetype couple of the New Labour stay-behind army that has the nation so blighted, the Civil Service is also full of the same.

Finally, to add injury to insult, the chairman of the charity Oxfam International, Juan Alberto Fuentes, has been arrested as part of an investigation into a corruption scandal although, as is made clear, "his arrest is not related to his role at Oxfam"; just unfortunate timing.

** please read the excellent responses there on this subject, especially from Mike, now probably a long way down the comment thread. 

2 comments:

Ted Treen said...

I accept your reference to the "Iron Law of Oligarchy", but what this, so many other charities, and virtually all state-run enterprises and departments, follow much more closely is the "Iron Law of Bureaucracy":-

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy
In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

Span Ows said...

Hi Ted, thanks. I agree, reading about it it may well have developed from Michels' Iron Law of Oligarchy.