Bishop Hill NSPCC deletes criticism from its Facebook site
Mar 7, 2009 Education Fake charities Home education Everybody's favourite fake charity, the NSPCC, has been taking a bit of a kicking at its Facebook site, with home educators, outraged by the NSPCC's linking of HE with child abuse, giving full vent to their feelings about being slurred in this way.
Rather than engage, the NSPCC has first denied doing anything wrong and has now tried to kill the debate by deleting the criticism in its entirety.
Here's the Facebook page before
And here it is now
Pretty much every trace of the criticism is gone, with only official responses from HE organisations like AHEd remaining. It looks as though they've got rid of the links section completely, presumably because they can't control what people are saying about them on other sites.
This is shameful behaviour.
Outrageous slur followed by innocent denial is a familiar tactic in political circles of course - I'm reminded of the Haltemprice & Howden by-election, when Labour backbenchers dropped heavy hints that David Davis was romanticly involved with Shami Chakrabarti. The smear was outrageous, and clarifications and apologies followed in due course, but by then the damage was done. This kind of subterfuge is the way of the world among politicians: acting without honour or decency is a mark of strength, showing remorse a sign of weakness.
But for a charity to behave in this way is a surprise, and with our conspiracy theorist hats on we can wonder if the NSPCC's sudden lurch into political hatcheting doesn't actually have the fingerprints of government spin doctors on it. Either way, a charity, especially a big one like the NSPCC, shouldn't be adopting the "apologise, shrug shoulders and move on" approach that suffices for the political classes. It has to deal with criticism in a public manner. Its charitable status depends on providing a public benefit, something that it is arguably no longer doing if it is facing such vehement disapproval by one sector of the community with which it is involved.
If it doesn't, people might just start to mistake it for an arm of government rather than the charity it purports to be.
Reader Comments (9)
The NSPCC’s campaigning role has often been controversial. The Guardian reported New Philanthropy Capital recently concluded that its campaigning is “flawed and naïve” and that there is “zero evidence” that £250m the NSPCC has spent on its recent “Full Stop” campaign actually benefited any children.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/aug/01/childrensservices.comment
No surprise, Bishop. The NSPCC's intervention against the campaign for equal parenting a few years ago stank of government string-pulling (it wasn't the only fake charity thus engaged).
Fathers 4 Justice staged an all-women protest at its offices in 2004, resulting in the embarrassing admission that mothers -- according to the NSPCC's own research -- account for the majority of child abuse:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4014015.stm
It's difficult to negotiate the streets of Bristol on a Saturday afternoon these days without being waylaid by an NSPCC chugger. Occasionally (when I'm feeling mischievous), I'll let them give me the full spiel. Depending on their gullibility, you can keep them engaged for anything up to an hour before they realise that they are flogging a dead horse.
As someone whose life was stolen by the family courts with the collusion of the NSPCC, this counts as time well spent.
I do monitor the main lists, but not as closely as I used to. I've now seen the post you refer to now. VP is clearly way out of his depth.
What strikes me is that for someone from the NSPCC to sound off in this way about HE when he is clearly completely uninformed about the whole subject, suggests strongly that he is a pawn in the process rather than an independent operator. I guess we knew this, but it's nice to have evidence to support the idea.
Unforutately the NSPCC does not like criticism, from within or without, in fact it is run very much like a fascist regime, where employees (many of whom have been treat extremely badly over recent months) are frightened to speak up, and when they do they are ignored (sometimes met with quips like 'how is that helping to end child cruelty?'). Persoanlly I wouldn't give them a penny.
Anon
Please feel free to drop me a line with further details.
I'm sure that cash-strapped donators will be delighted to know that the NSPCC is currently intending to splash the cash on new desks for all and standardised artwork in order to futrther the 'brand' and create, as much as possible, uniform spaces a la Tesco or Sainsbury's.
How they can do this when so many people are losing their job's is beyond me, but what's worse is that children and young people nationwide are losing valuable NSPCC services - collateral damage as part of the NSPCC's new strategy.
There's a lot of criticism of the NSPCC on the internet - most for the wrong reasons - but knowing what I do I still wouldn't give them a penny.