Burning Our Money - More FakeCharity Fun!

From today's FT:

Environmental groups last night launched what could be a landmark lawsuit against the Treasury to force it to ensure that taxpayers' money invested in the Royal Bank of Scotland supports only projects that satisfy minimum green and human rights standards.

The move is the latest sign of how the government's stakes in some of Britain's biggest commercial banks could affect the companies' operations. Three groups of environmentalists - the World Development Movement (1), Platform (2) and People & Planet (3) - are behind the case, which has been lodged at the High Court.

*Ahem*

Did they say "Environmental groups"?

(1) I covered the World Development Movement last September.

(2) Platform "receives funding from foundations and trusts, state bodies and individuals, from across the sectors of our work: the arts, environment, social justice and education.

[Their] current funders include: Arts Council England - London; Artists Project Earth; Ashden Trust; Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust; CS Mott Foundation; Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust; Lipman Miliband Foundation; Network for Social Change*
Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation; Roddick Foundation; Sigrid Rausing Trust; Tedworth Trust; Wallace Global Fund.

* The Network for Social Change also dole out money to the World Development Movement, see (1) above.

(3) People & Planet appears to be funded via the People & Planet Trust. Note 3 to their 2008 accounts shows that they received £36,586 in grants from Bridge House Trust; City Parochial Trust; Network for Social Change*; Ferguson Trust; Commitment for Life.

* Yup. Them again.

*/ahem*

New Labour Minister* talks sense - shock!

John Hutton at the Nulab Conference, in among the inevitable dross is this: "No coal and no nuclear equals no lights, no power, no future."

Guess what The World Development Movement, who received a modest £129,710 from the EU back in 2005 (page 9 of this), the last year for which they could be arsed to prepare accounts, have to say...

"John Hutton’s pro-coal stance ... is not founded on science, economics or reason."

Erm, coal burns to boil water to drive turbines to produce electricity, that's the science covered; extracting coal and burning it in power stations is a profitable activity that doesn't need subsidies - in fact, it creates tax revenues and employment, so that's the economics covered; and people like having electricity, that's the reason. Have I missed anything?

The World Development Movement has a parent charity, which spent a cool £1 million on a new office building in Ruffley Road, London SW9 0LS in 2006 (page 8 of this). The accounts bemoan "the widespread persistence of poverty after half a century of international effort to eradicate, or at least appreciably diminish it" without any apparent trace of irony. The possibility that aid payments cannot, and will not ever 'eradicate poverty' is of course off the radar - if they ever admitted it, they'd lose their raison d'être.

* Yes I know that he is a Secretary rather than a Minister, the difference appears to be that a Secretary is more senior and is in the Cabinet. So why is the Prime Minister not called Prime Secretary?