THE RICHNESS OF POVERTY HUSTLING

Wonder did anyone out there catch the debate on Today this morning  concerning the claim from the Kids Company that there are “at least one million” kids in Britain who are starving? Well, when I say debate, it wasn’t.

Instead we had two people, one from Netmums (who else? Yawn) and another from Leon restaurants who came on to agree that the one million starving figure was, if anything, underplaying the monumental scale of the problem. This suggestion that we have huge numbers of children in the UK  at starvation level is a constant theme in BBC reports and it always can be tracked down to the Poverty Industry sticking out press releases based on the most spurious “research” and the answer is always the same – more Welfare benefits please.

During this particular interview (7.48am) when it was suggested that good food awareness might help, one of the poverty hustlers explained that whilst this might have some merit how would it help a single mum, maybe a sex worker, stressed out on crack cocaine and thus unable to feed their kids. The BBC interviewer didn’t bother asking how a Mother can afford crack cocaine but not food for their kids. The Poverty Industry can always rely on the BBC to run with its contrived and vacuous headlining.

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44 Responses to THE RICHNESS OF POVERTY HUSTLING

  1. Fred Bloggs says:

    On LBC, a mother said that some families sent their children to breakfast clubs so the money they saved was spent paying for SKY. Also what has Leons, (a restarant in the Brompton Rd), got to do with children’s breakfast, apart from the publicity campaign they have been on lately.

       19 likes

  2. As I See It says:

    Nicky Campbell and Rachel Burden are getting in on the act.

    ‘Do you know any children who go hungry – call us! We can do this anonymously’
    Naturally the BBC will have this Kids Company puff across all platforms.
    Alan Yentob is the chairman of trustees of this campaigning charity.
    ‘BBC’s Alan Yentob is at the centre of an intern-auctioning scandal. The charity “Kid’s Company” had a fundraising event on Wednesday 5 October attended by Clive Anderson and Rowan Atkinson plus the great and good of the liberal-luvvie media world. The auction was quite a hit with plenty of opportunity to “buy privilege”. Lot Number 9, “a week shadowing the BBC creative director” was particuarly popular – going for a total of £4,100. ‘
    Will Gompertz BBC ‘arts editor’ has been a fund raiser for them.
    ‘…..Gompertz also carried out work for the charity Kids Company, of which Yentob is chairman of trustees. Last November, Gompertz organised a jumble sale for the charity which raised £50,000.’

    BBC/Guardian/Labour/…now….Kids Company……?

    ‘Kids Company are delighted to be colaborating with the BBC Proms and the Horrible Histories to create a choir to perform at the family prom on July 30th at the historic Royal Albert Hall. The choir, made up from 10 Kids Company schools, have been working flat out to rehearse songs from the CBBC series, including Charles II King of Bling, and will be joined by The Aurora Orchestra on the evening.
    This promises to be an auspicious debut and serves to reinforce the fact that the Proms are, as Henry Wood intended, for everyone.

    Free tickets available from 8th July online, by phone and in person at the Royal Albert Hall box office.’

    So a harmless children’s charity?

    ‘Kids Company founder: cuts contributed to riots’

    ‘Kids Company has launched a major social media campaign today to raise £5m to fund research into vulnerable children’s brains.’

       17 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      The story moves across the spectrum of BBC broadcasting, discussed from the exact same angle each time. Agenda? What agenda?

      Even if the BBC is too large and disorganized, this keeps on happening.

         10 likes

  3. Merlin says:

    If there is such poverty then both hosts and guests might have suggested stopping the foreign aid swindle and uncontrolled immigration which both place a huge burden on the country’s infrastructure and finances; but the BBC always sidestep this fundamental element which really should be at the centre of any debate aiming to elucidate levels of national poverty.
    On a similar theme, yesterday I happened to catch a heavily censored BBC Scotland short documentary on how the NHS in certain areas is facing bankruptcy and woeful shortages of appropriate staffing – to the extent that lives are being put at risk (this is happening in England as well). However, NOT ONE mention of the huge influx of immigration which is buckling both health and education services and no mention either regards the huge sums of money wasted on interpretation costs to do with leaflets and the promotion of public health; some NHS leaflets up here to do with drug safety and sexual health have been translated into 14 languages!
    If uncontrolled immigration continues at this unsustainable level then it won’t be just children experiencing abject poverty – it’ll be the whole country!

       43 likes

  4. DJ says:

    C’mon, you can’t say you didn’t enjoy the bit where the guy explained how they were helping people ‘understand vegetables’.

    Then there was the explanation that poverty meant people sharing a McDonald’s Happy Meal (apparently, for the limited purposes of proving Britain is Hell on Earth, warnings about the Vast Obesity Epidemic have now been put on hold).

    Yes, indeed, the Beeboid skated over the whole ‘crack’ thing and also the line that in some cases they were now dealing with a third generation of people completely unable to cope with life.

    Hmmmm….. what could possibly have happened three generations ago? And doesn’t that mean the whole Welfare State has been a tragic, misdirected disaster?

       40 likes

  5. Framer says:

    Evan Davis interviewing the author of the report on the UK Border Agency and the 150,000 lost immigrants who overstayed was a masterpiece in avoidance.
    Davis couldn’t contain himself, twice trying to move the topic off to possible queues at airports before the Olympics.
    He is such a juvenile.

       20 likes

    • Merlin says:

      I find that man extremely irritating; he really is middle class smugness personified.

         18 likes

  6. Pah says:

    1 million starving kids? Then how come only 4000 dies of starvation in NHS hospitals. Oh no hang on thats 4000 adults that die because the nurses are not feeding them.

    So if 1 million are starving how many are dying? Current NHS figures ? 0? Hmmm perhaps someone at the BBC is lying through their teeth?

    A job for Levenson, or not?

       22 likes

  7. Bruce says:

    Yes, I heard Rachel Burden on 5 Live this morning talking to some woman from Kids Company who was spouting on about this nonsense.

       5 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      The story moves across the spectrum of BBC broadcasting, discussed from the exact same angle each time. Agenda? What agenda?

      Even if the BBC is too large and disorganized, this keeps on happening.

         5 likes

  8. Backwoodsman says:

    there is a whole industry out there, it calls itself the ‘third sector’, or something. It appears to be comprised of leftists who found frontline politics too stressful, or leftists who didn’t quite manage to land a cozy public sector sinecure.
    These people have managed to take over numerous charidees, have awarded themselves public sector linked salaries and are now subverting whatever the charitees original role was, to a suitably leftist agenda.
    Apart from the wonderful RNLI, the Farmland Restoration Trust and the Dogs Trust, I wouldn’t give any of them a sniff of my money .
    Which brings me to another point. There are some extremely dodgy ‘grants’ of public money being handed out to these hustlers. The Tories need to get a grip on the whole situation.

       31 likes

    • chrisH says:

      Not stressful…they`d only go under if they were not voted in…their self-esteem could not cope.
      Also-that accountability bit every few years at the ballot box would not do-these gravy trainers demand a job for life….

         6 likes

    • Framer says:

      Not just public sector level pay but increasingly actual membership of public sector pension schemes if “such individuals and organisations are providing a contribution to the relevant sector,” so says the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury Lord Sassoon.

         3 likes

  9. Lloyd Reith says:

    One day it’s 1m starving kids next it’s 1m obese kids. The usual middle class liberal knobs patronising the working/under class again. Or should I say making a good living on our money out of them.

       26 likes

  10. Earls Court says:

    All those metro trendy leftys hate the working class. Their multicultural project hasn’t worked out for them. They don’t care that it has caused problems for the immigrants and the natives. Just that all these immigrants won’t vote for their precious socialist labour party or have anything to do with any of their cultural marxist policies. So they will have to get the working classes to support them. The best thing that could happen would be a new party that would take the working class vote away from Labour. The last time that happened was to the Liberal party in the early 20th century and look what happened to them.

       14 likes

    • Dysgwr_Cymraeg says:

      Ah yes, gorgeous George’s respect success has rather blown their gerrymandering project clean out of the water huh?

         3 likes

  11. Mark says:

    Kid’s Company is the personal fiefdom on Camila Batmanghelidjh – now she is someone who doesn’t look like she have ever missed a meal.

       26 likes

    • alan says:

      It’s called chugging…but in this case no cold, wet, street corners shaking a collection tin…a nice warm BBC studio where both the BBC and the charity are getting what they want by stirring up trouble…to embarrass the government which keeps the BBC happy, and then in all likelihood has some minister reaching to the public coffers to shell out ‘guilt’ money to the charity.

         16 likes

      • Lloyd Reith says:

        The guilt money is spent not the the deserving, but on leases for new offices, new IT systems, ex’s to go on lots and lots of conferences, obviously either traveling first class or in the new BMW lease car paid by the slush fund, and whilst all this is going on, looking out for the next lost cause to carry on this very lucrative “living”.

           17 likes

    • jarwill101 says:

      Never knowingly underfed. A maxim that applies to all the sleek, well-heeled charitistas as they buzz about their family businesses & job creation schemes for those who didn’t manage a PPE backstage pass.

         10 likes

    • Jeff says:

      You’re wicked!!!

         5 likes

  12. Bodo says:

    Former Labour MP Anne Cryer had the courage to stand up and criticise the Labour govt 3rd world immigration policy as ‘importing poverty’. It would be interesting to see a demographic breakdown of these hungry kids. Just who are they, and how much is it costing the taxpayer to fund Labours multiculti nirvana.

       21 likes

  13. chrisH says:

    Stunning crap it was!
    Turns out that “food insecurity” is the issue , as opposed to “starvation”…although obviously millions upon millions of kids suffer from having no food….I see them at bus stops, schools and riots and think….poor lambs are hungry, and all that litter that they make must be that of the toffs they service for a Happy Meal once a month.
    Kids Company…who else to ask then…Batmangheghli clearly ate all the pies and puts five-a -day fruit bowls on her head to mock the poor.
    Open up those BBC canteens NOW…this is a national emergency people…free food for the hungry kids of the nation…let them fill their boots free at all BBC canteens nationally…NOW!

       26 likes

    • Demon says:

      “Kids Company…who else to ask then…Batmangheghli clearly ate all the pies and puts five-a -day fruit bowls on her head to mock the poor.”

      That is a brilliant sentence – definitely caused a chortle or two.

         16 likes

  14. As I See It says:

    Seems the BBC just can’t get enough of Ms Batmangelidjh or this hungry children theme.

    BBC London 6 April 2012

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17639515

    ‘The number of children in London who are going hungry is increasing according to research by a children’s charity.

    Camila Batmangelidjh, the founder of Kids Company, said that every week 2,000 children would go without their main meal of the day if the charity was not there to feed them.’

    6 April 2012

    Drive Time with Eddie Nestor BBC London 94.9

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00q2ptx

    ‘An estimated 2000 children would go hungry in London every day without charity help, new allegations about police racism and will hiding cigarettes in shops keep young people from starting smoking?’

    3 March 2012

    ‘Jon Cuthill visits Weston, one of Southampton’s ‘forgotten’ housing estates, to see how hard-pressed families are experiencing child poverty during the downturn….”If we send our kids to school with nothing to eat, we’d be in even more trouble than we probably are,” he said.’

    And in the USA

    Panorama: Poor America, BBC One, Monday, 13 February 2012

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9695000/9695217.stm

    Panorama’s Hilary Andersson travelled to Whitney Elementary School in Las Vegas to meet some of America’s youngest poor.

    ‘Children told of going to bed hungry and worrying about their families, while school officials said some children were resorting to eating “ketchup soup”‘

    Agenda, agenda, agenda!

       10 likes

    • Andy S. says:

      Batmanjelly was also on the News Channel’s “Hard Talk” programme a couple nights ago.

         5 likes

    • 1327 says:

      Of course they love her she is one of them coming from a nice public school with all the right views and a touch exotic and multicultural with it. Notice she doesn’t actually appear to be Muslim (that might indicate viewpoints the Beeboids might not like) but like to dress up like no Iranian ex-pat I have ever come across.

         11 likes

  15. Dysgwr_Cymraeg says:

    Starving children, obesity epidemic, somewhat confusing.
    How can they afford both food and the latest i-gadget (pod, pad, phone, whatever) and a full sky package?

       10 likes

    • Dysgwr_Cymraeg says:

      One more item to add to the list of must-haves this morning on bbc breakfast: a £500 prom night for your about-to-leave school youngster.
      Starving?….nonsense.

         4 likes

  16. Hampstead Dirt Farmer says:

    I could hardly believe what I was hearing when this was on – I could have been still asleep for it was as surreal as a waking dream. It started with some woman maunderingly recounting how she relied for her own nourishment on the leavings of her child. But then she said her child being at the age when it required all the nutrition it could get, meant that there was rarely anything left on its plate and she would go without. Then someone took her to Kids co. and they gave her, as she claimed, the first hot meal she’d had for ages, and credits for groceries. Didn’t catch why this individual was so helpless. She wasn’t challenged and she was dictating the studio-hyped justification of herself as a grievously disadvantaged individual.

    The equally bizarre conclusion was that she is now working at McDonalds and studying to be a nurse!

       9 likes

  17. Kanburi says:

    “….whilst this might have some merit how would it help a single mum, maybe a sex worker, stressed out on crack cocaine and thus unable to feed their kids.”

    Would it not be the case that more benefits would not help the kids, as mum would just buy more crack with the extra money? What would the kids be doing in this neglectful and potentially dangerous environment? Would it not be better to remove them to a place of safety?

    A good, impartial journalist would ask these questions – why not the BBC? Oh, hang on….

       7 likes

  18. Amounderness Lad says:

    A million starving children in Britain? But I thought all the children in Britain were grossly obese Fast Food eating, Video Game playing, TV watching, bone idle Couch Potatoes who stuffed and stuffed themselves with food until they hardly had the energy to drag themselves more than a few yards without risking a heart attack.

    Now I find out that the poor little dears are eating so little that they are likely to starve to death at any moment. The one thing I am certain about is that this country has been suffering a fifteen year bout of persistent massive exaggeration leading to periods of chronic mass hysteria from those gullible enough to swallow the lastest scare story.

       7 likes

    • jarwill101 says:

      ‘The undermining of common sense, & an individual’s rational self-awareness, plus the regular stirring-up of panics & scares to create a febrile, unstable atmosphere, is a Frankfurt School tactic to further the influence & control of the authoritarian state, &, of course, the population’s dependency on it.’
      Hereward the Wake. 1070. Somewhere in East Anglia. ‘Thoughts on Resisting a Totalitarian Invasion.’

         6 likes

  19. TigerOC says:

    As everyone has noted this is all just sloppy journalism. A group of middle class womin who have dreamed up their their latest “get rich quick” scheme. Nobody but nobody will have a a real pop at these thieves for fear of being labelled “Hilter”.
    Of my immediate neighbours I have 2 single mums each with a young child, housed in 3 bedroom private rental houses. I know one of these mums who deliberately got in the family way because work was “too hard”.
    Both are paid by the state to stay at home and look after the little ‘uns. They get grants for themselves, the child, rent paid, no council tax. The mums are expanding by the day because they are probably glued to re-runs of Jeremy Kyle. Kids have new everything. Just before these little ones turn 5 mum will probably go down to the local to find the next sperm donor.
    The previous little ‘uns will then turn into the local version of “Dennis the menace” and rampage through the neighbourhood breaking everything in sight.
    Meantime regular folk work their asses off the ensure their kids get a grounding to make good lives for themselves.
    Just as an aside I see the latest heart wrenching charity is looking for funds to save all the donkeys in the world for just £2/week. I suggested that perhaps we could look at a charity protecting all the terrified little slugs that everyone is persecuting at the moment. 🙂

       2 likes

    • Dysgwr_Cymraeg says:

      Yes, notice that all the donkeys in the world become OUR problem now?
      Nothing to do with the scum who mistreat them the world over?

         4 likes

  20. Phobic-ist says:

    ‘Food insecurity!?’ WTF!!

       3 likes

  21. lojolondon says:

    Have a look on the web for the drought in Somalia, and compare it to the ‘drought’ we have here in the UK. (can you believe they STILL haven’t lifted the hosepipe ban in East Anglia??)

    All I can say is I guess that the words ‘drought’ and ‘starving’ means different things to a commie living in England and someone living in the Somalia!

       0 likes

  22. JuilaR says:

    The figures quoted were estimates. I’m a primary school teacher and in my class there are 6 children who don’t get breakfast and often tell me they haven’t had a proper dinner and are hungry. There’s definitely a problem and its great charities are speaking up about it as the kids can’t.

       2 likes