Another nail in the coffin for the BBC
The BBC’s annual Comic Relief is a charity fundraiser that has raised over £750 million. Though there is much about it that is commendable, revelations that £150 million was invested in arms dealing firms and tobacco companies and lost £800,000 on a failed venture involving Gordon Ramsay will undoubtedly anger the public.
Having featured the BBC’s other charitable activities before – including them having employed Max Clifford as one of their spokesmen for Children in Need despite his having admitted to “know[ing]” the names of child abusers and now facing a trial based on 11 counts of indecent assault – this latest disgrace is indicative of the culture of indifference and carelessness that is plainly predicates through this publicly controlled broadcasting house.
That a BBC Panorama investigation into the claims about Comic Relief’s investment strategy has been twice shelved at the instruction of the corporation’s Director General Lord Hall and that staff costs at Comic Relief have doubled from £7.1 million a year in 2008 to £13.5 million in 2012 are further illustration of what is wrong with “Auntie’s” attitude to how to manage their charitable activities.
It is time that the incompetent organisation that is the BBC was either properly regulated or privatised. The Charity Commission, equally, would do well to act also. If they did, they might show themselves to be something other than a toothless waste of space.
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