Tag Archives: my generation

Big society ambassador blames cuts for closure of his charity

2:44pm Thu March 1st

David Cameron’s Big Society ambassador has alluded to the role of government cuts in the closure of his charity. Third Sector magazine have followed up Scrapbook’s exclusive on Cameron’s Big Society ambassador – reporting that he closed his charity “because of funding problems”.

In the latest embarrassment to the Prime Minister’s repeatedly-stalling project, the closure of Shaun Bailey’s MyGeneration outfit will see five staff losing their jobs. And with the voluntary sector hit hard by cuts to public bodies which commissioned their services, Bailey appeared to lay the blame on the resultant squeeze on charities:

“We saw that in this tough funding environment it was hard to sustain that level of services”

MyGeneration’s short history has been turbulent and marred by financial mismanagement. Bailey stood down from his full time role with MyGeneration just one year after he failed to win Hammersmith from Labour in 2010. The charity, whose brand was intrinsically linked with Bailey’s public persona, had spent a whopping £92,749 on “fundraising and publicity costs” in the accounting period encompassing the election.

Time for another B.S. relaunch, then?

Cameron’s Big Society ambassador shuts down his own charity

4:09pm Tue February 28th

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David Cameron’s big society ambassador has shut down his own charity, Political Scrapbook can reveal. Tory A-lister Shaun Bailey allowed his My Generation outfit to go to the wall less than a year after Cameron’s other BS adviser, Lord Wei, quit his unpaid position after claiming that working for free is incompatible with “having a life”.

After this blog reported their failure to submit accounts two weeks ago, records held by the Charity Commission show that My Generation officially “ceased to exist” yesterday. When we rang for comment earlier the answerphone was full.

Poor financial accounting and endless personal promotion have plagued My Generation’s relatively short life span. With advertisements for a “Part Time COO” appearing last June, could it be that the charity had outlived its usefulness for the failed Tatler Tory?

The Big Society just wasn’t big enough for Wei and Bailey.

Tory A-lister Shaun Bailey fails to submit his charity’s accounts (again)

4:09pm Tue February 14th

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Once again, David Cameron’s urban talisman and infamous Tatler Tory flop Shaun Bailey has been caught taking a laissez-faire approach to financial management, with charity My Generation’s accounts being 14 days late, meaning valuable donations will now be redirected to pay penalty fees.

This marks the fourth time in five years that the charity’s accounts have been overdue, with Bailey previously excusing such incompetence by claiming:

“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”.

But after a parliamentary campaign and years at the helm of a growing charity, the former Hammersmith candidate’s feeble attempts at explaining My Generation’s behaviour simply do not wash. In fact, visiting the annals of Scrapbook past, the charity have a history of charitable donations going unaccounted for:

In April 2010, the charity reached the headlines with massively disproportionate back-office costs and an inexcusable failure to account for nearly £16,000 in funds.
Further digging revealed that despite being a local charity with its focus centered on neighbouring London boroughs, the charity spent nearly £60,000 a year on travel and “subsistence”.
And, accounts showing a tripling of expenditure on publicity to £90,000, which conveniently coincided with Shaun Bailey’s parliamentary campaign.

Let’s just hope that when the accountds are finally received, they are more accurate than previous attempts.

Select committee quiz “big society” ambassador over dodgy accounts

3:39pm Wed June 1st

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We are greatly amused to see the Public Administration Select Committee taking its cue from Scrapbook when it came to quizing David Cameron’s “big society” ambassador, Shaun Bailey. In April we highlighted his charity’s latest set of characteristically shoddy accounts, which reveal a tripling in publicity spending to more than £90,000 in the period which, coincidentally, Shaun Bailey was running as an A-list Conservative candidate.

Despite appeals from Conservative members of the committee, Bailey was forced to answer a series of embarrassing questions and admit that “things were accounted for badly”. He then appeared to deny Charity Commission’s interest in the £16,000 which, erm, went missing from the coffers, stating categorically:

“We were never under investigation by the Charity Commission.”

There was a detailed investigation by the regulators — but top brass were loathe to deploy their full powers under the Charities Act 1993 against someone who may have become an MP. Scrapbook has seen copies of internal Charity Commission correspondence referencing the “considerable sensitivities” stemming from Bailey’s position as a “prominent Conservative politician” and adviser to David Cameron.

Provided statutory powers are not invoked, compliance case officers poring over accounts and forcing charity trustees to re-submit them is referred to, in Commission parlance as “assessing the issues raised in line with normal procedure”.

Sounds like an investigation to us!

Big Society ambassador tripled “charity publicity” in election year

1:07pm Tue April 26th

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A charity run by the government’s official “big society ambassador” Shaun Bailey more than more than tripled its spending on publicity in the accounting period for which he was fighting a marginal seat. Having enraged other charities with what have been described as ”disgusting slurs”, perhaps David Cameron’s “urban talisman” can explain why his operation spends 35 pence in every pound on publicity but less than 20 pence on activities and events for children.

The latest accounts from My Generation, the charity started by Bailey just months before he was selected to fight Hammersmith for the Tories, show that the organisation spent £92,749 on “fundraising and publicity costs”. With their brand intrinsically linked with Bailey’s public persona, the organisation increased publicity in 2009/10 such that the ratio with total spending doubled — and the cash figure tripled — in comparison with the year before.

It’s not been a good year for Shaun. The fêted Tory candidate had his campaign kickstarted by a personal visit from David Cameron in January 2010 but since then he lost the election and his “charity” work has been dogged with allegations of poor practice. Last April The Times reported that there was nearly £16,000 in unaccounted expenditure in the My Generation accounts. Scrapbook then exposed shameful levels of income wasted on management, administration and publicity in which Bailey featured heavily.

Concerns around Bailey’s activities were raised at the same time as fellow Tory candidate Joanne Cash was ordered by the Charity Commission to cease using the word “charitable” to describe a project funded and run by her Conservative association. Likewise, there can be absolutely no doubt that Bailey has benefited politically from My Generation.

Despite claims that he “had not expressed any political ambitions” when the organisation was founded, he was previously a fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, a Tory-affiliated think tank highly influential in the creation of Thatcherism. The CPS is well-known as a breeding ground for the next generation of Tory politicians. The My Generation business plan stipulated “three year’s funding” for Bailey’s role, which would take him up to the latest possible election date of May 2010. Oddly, this time limit did not apply to the other staff.

Bailey is happy to dish out criticism to others in the sector, pouring scorn on charities when they complained they can’t deliver the big society if their funding is slashed:

“That’s a few people with their vested interest who thought they were going to make a lot of money,”

Perhaps Bailey, in turn, will take heed of advice on best practice endorsed by the Institute of Fundraising:

“Development activity generates a very good rate of return and it is not unusual for charities to achieve £4 – £5 back for every £1 invested.”

Assuming a conventional relationship with donors, My Generation generated £3.14 worth of income for every pound spent on publicity – significantly below both what CharityFacts say are usual rates of return and what the charity was achieving previously.

Just what was the A-list candidate trying to promote so heavily with such little success in 2009/10?

Number crunching: Murdoch's "war on waste" edition

11:45am Fri June 11th

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“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?!

Charity Commission stalls for time as Shaun Bailey organisation admits accounts are "not correct"

3:50pm Fri June 4th

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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?

Tory candidate Shaun Bailey faces questions over £60,000 charity travel expenses

4:19pm Tue April 27th

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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.

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