FakeCharities: The fun never stops. Ever.

From The Evening Standard:

David Cameron attacked the “moral failure” of state-run welfare today as he announced radical plans to use taxpayers' cash to fund charities helping the poorest in society. The Tory leader pledged to match Labour's commitment to eradicating child poverty but said that a Conservative government would use community groups rather than the state to mend “broken Britain”...

Aaargh! The purpose of the welfare state is to keep people above the breadline, no more and no less. If politicians really wanted people to take responsibility for themselves (i.e. stay in a stable marriage, take work when and where they can, save up for a rainy day etc.) all you have to do is replace the entire welfare system with universal flat-rate per-person benefits and restrict income based means-testing to no more than the normal basic rate of tax+Employee's NIC (i.e. currently 31%) or maybe 50% for social tenants (who'd pay an extra 19% of their wages in rent, which enables us to get rid of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit completely), as well as slashing fraud and error and administration costs to a bare minimum, yippee, hurray!

Moving on:

He also announced that he would appoint charity boss Debbie Scott, who runs the Tomorrow's People group, as a Tory peer.

Aren't we already sick to death of the Labour government appointing their friends and acolytes to the House of Lords and then giving them a job in the Cabinet?

And who are Tomorrow's People anyway? What do they do?

In their 2008 accounts, they claim (page 2) that they 'helped' 12,798 'clients' in the year..."Of the total leavers in the year, 3,081 were on a programme where securing a job was the target outcome and 64% of those leavers secured a positive outcome. A further 850 were helped into training or unpaid voluntary work." So they are a little coy about how many of their 'clients' found a permanent job - a couple of thousand, maybe? It is unknown how many would have found a job anyway, of course.

And how much does this cost?

Page 9: Total income £7,452,252.

I've no idea how much it costs getting a couple of thousand people into work, but it sure as heck ain't £7,452,252 (we could check the accounts of a large recruitment agency like Michael Page for a private sector comparative), so what on earth do they spend it on?

Page 17: Wages and salaries £4,320,542.

And who pays for it?

Page 5: Contract income streams continue as previously and include, amongst others, DWP, the Government Offices for London, the North West and the South West, the London Development Agency, and the London Boroughs ofIslington and Lambeth. Donations received include, amongst others, those from Diageo plc, the Laidlaw Foundation, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Esmee Fairbairn, Rank Foundation, Paradise Foundation and Lady Edwina Grosvenor."

Hands up everybody who still thinks that the Tories will be anything more than marginally less-bad than Labour.