Jun/10
11:45 4
Number crunching: Murdoch’s “war on waste” edition
“Meanwhile, it also emerged that the luvvie pen-pushers at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport blew an eye-watering £70,440 on first-class travel in the past two years alone”, wailed The Sun in a recent piece on its so-called “war on waste”. Please allow Scrapbook to provide some context!
Amount the Department of Culture, Media and Sport – 500 staff – was lambasted by The Sun for spending on first-class travel in two years:
£70,440
Amount “community charity” My Generation – less than 10 staff – spent on travel in just one year, only to see its Tory chief executive Shaun Bailey commissioned to write three articles for The Sun, who tipped him to be Britain’s “first black PM”:
£58,899
It’s almost as if they’re, um, supporting the Tories or something?!
Jun/10
15:50 3
Charity Commission stalls for time as Shaun Bailey organisation admits accounts are “not correct”
Fêted but ultimately fated, Shaun Bailey numbered among the so-called Tatler Tories who failed spectacularly to live up to their hype on May 6th. The self-styled “kid from the estate” featured on Scrapbook during the election in relation to his profligate “charity” in Hammersmith. Accounts for My Generation show the operation could not account for a missing £15,952, spent exorbitant sums on back office administration and, amazingly for a supposedly local charity, £60,000 on travel.
Firefighting the growing scandal as election day closed in, Bailey’s team briefed national newspapers that monies had been allocated to incorrect categories in official accounts:
“What you are dealing with is a kid from the estate who had a good idea to do this and never had a wider view of accountants and lawyers. We have raised this money, spent it on the kids. We just didn’t know.” – Shaun Bailey
Indeed, when Scrapbook phoned My Generation a member of staff claimed that “what is in the accounts is not correct” and the charity planned to re-submit them.
But it seems Bailey’s self-promotion vehicle trundles still onwards after his election defeat, partnering with freesheet The Metro for a fundraising drive despite their topsy-turvy accounts. As with other My Generation publicity, Bailey was featured prominently:
With unsuspecting newspaper readers pouring yet more cash into the coffers of an organisation with extremely dubious accounting practices, one would hope charity regulators are treating the matter with some urgency. Despite an internal target of 15 days, however, Scrapbook understands the Charity Commission is yet to respond to an official complaint against the charity submitted nearly two months ago.
In the last few minutes a spokesperson told us:
We are assessing the concerns that were raised with us regarding the charity My Generation (charity registration number 1114167). Following our assessment we will be updating the complainant of the outcome. We expect this to be within the next few weeks.
Is this being kicked into the long grass?
Apr/10
16:19 15
Tory candidate Shaun Bailey faces questions over £60,000 charity travel expenses
Scrapbook posted last week on the extremely questionable patterns of spending at the charity run by David Cameron’s “urban talisman” and candidate for Hammersmith, Shaun Bailey. Published records indicate that the organisation not only spends extraordinary amounts on administration and publicity (which happens to feature Bailey heavily) but is unable to account for nearly £16,000.
Further digging prompts yet more difficult questions. Official records held by the Charity Commission indicate that the organisation operates in the London boroughs of Brent, Camden, City of Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea. It is strange, then, that a local community charity should spend nearly nearly a third of its budget – some £60,000 – on travel and “subsistence” in just one year:
My Generation’s collection of London-based action projects leads one to wonder where on earth all this money is going. One possible explanation could be the Next Generation initiative run by (the long-established and very reputable) BSES Expeditions at the Royal Geographical Society. The programme aims to widen access to BSES’ overseas trips and, despite the similar name, is run with a number of other partners of which Bailey’s organisation is just one:
This is an international visitation and scientific study programme we run in conjunction with one our partners, The British Schools Exploring Society (BSES). The programme is designed to challenge and develop young people aged 16-20. The project runs over 10 months and culminates in a 6 week-long expedition to countries such as Madagascar and the Amazon Rain Forrest in Peru – My Generation
With the pre-expedition training programme fully funded by BSES, partner organisations and volunteers raise around £2,000 for each overseas place. The high watermark for My Generation applicants was four people for a trip in summer 2009, corresponding to a maximum of £8,000 under the account heading “travel, subsistence and motor”. Worryingly, this leaves more than £50,000 spent on other travel in one year – more than £4,200 per month!
So, for context, how much accommodation and travel could 50 grand stretch to?
- 42,000 litres of petrol
- More than 200 first class returns train fares from London to Edinburgh
- 48 weeks in a five-star London hotel
- Tickets for you and 50 friends for a nine-day cruises round the Mediterranean
Of course, Scrapbook is, erm, entirely confident that there must be some logical explanation to this!
Over to you, Shaun.
Apr/10
15:04 9
Shameful accounts of Tory candidate’s charity
A charity managed by one of the Conservatives’ top parliamentary candidates is facing scrutiny by regulators after accounts indicated massively disproportionate back-office costs and a failure to account for nearly £16,000.
Shaun Bailey, the Tory candidate for Hammersmith, is the Managing Director of My Generation, apparently set up to “alleviate social and economic disadvantage”. The accounts for years ending 2007, 2008 and 2009 make grim reading for donors, whose money appears to be massively wasted on “management and administration” and “fundraising and publicity”:
It seems Bailey wouldn’t know voluntary sector best practice if it jumped up and said “marginal constituency”. CharityFacts was founded by Professor Adrian Sargeant of Bristol Business School and supported by the RSPCA, the NSPCC, Cancer Research UK and the British Red Cross:
We would normally have concerns about a charity spending more than 15% of its income on administration. Such charities we would ask to justify their level of expense. – CharityFacts
Fifteen percent, eh? My Generation’s 2007-2008 accounts show that nearly 19 in every 20 pounds spent that year under Bailey’s management was blown on back-office expenses and promotion (Bailey himself features heavily in their materials). The small blue segment at the top of the chart below designates “direct charitable expenditure”:
Having spent a mere 44% on administration in the last year for which accounts are available, Bailey might well claim that the charity has improved in this regard. However this is still way above what would be expected and, as a report by independent examiner’s report notes, there are ”£15,952 of payments without any supporting records”.
Scrapbook is not in the business of attacking charities for no reason but My Generation is absolutely integral to Brand Bailey. What’s the first sentence in his candidate biography?
While it may perform some good works, there is no doubt that this operation is a plank in a broader PR offensive by Conservative candidates. As The Times notes:
“Both [Joanne Cash and Shaun Bailey] are seen as pioneers of Mr Cameron’s plan to rebuild communities through self-help initiatives. The party claims its candidates have begun 150 such projects, although, when contacted, officials could cite only five.”
Blogger Ivan Pope has an excellent post on these charity-cum-political activities, written around the time Bailey was selected. In May 2007, our protagonist was bragging to the Guardian about his do-goodery. But digging done by Pope at this time indicate that that My Generation had no website and seemed only to have been discussed in the context of Shaun Bailey’s political career.
The company vehicle used for the charity had only been renamed from “The Policy Alliance” months before, around the time Bailey started jockeying for the Hammersmith selection. What a remarkable coincidence!
More to come on this one.
UPDATE 16:10 Just received the following from a reader who would rather remain anonymous: “I did an event with Bailey recently. It turned into him just promoting himself”!
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