April Fool Charities.

We've been here before and every year the story gets even more outrageous. Not that being fooled is confined to April. Charities do it to us every month of the year.

Let us say that you are a kindly soul with a few bucks spare at the end of the month and the 'charity' collector comes a'knocking at your door. They come to the Tavern too and we are nororiously difficult to find ! 

So you 'donate' $5 bucks. Good for you. And your sense of good fellowship is boosted for a while. If it is the 'Save the Children' charity you feel even better. We all want to save the children, don't we?

But guess what. 

You and 93,600* others have to chip in that $5 each just to pay the Big Boss Lady's salary. (*at current exchange rate)

That's before the kiddies see a cent. Well before.

Here she is.

She isn't in it for the money, but.....

She is not alone of course, In that charity alone there are nine more  people 'earning' over $200,000 a year. Her mates.

That's One million Eight Hundred Thousand bucks.  

How many $5 donations are needed for that? 360,000 people have to chip in.

Of course, it might not be her getting the top whack, because they won't say. They are hiding the top cat. But hey, do you really think it is someone 'below' her gold plated salt shaker?

Then there are their offices, cars, superannuation, health insurance, chairs and telephones, computers and of course the air-fares, as they do like to travel around encouraging YOU to give generously.

Michael Seamark was downing pints furiously as he told us.

Fury over £234,000 salary of the top boss at Save the Children 

• High earner, thought to be Jasmine Whitbread, among 20 earning over £100k

• Another nine on six-figure salaries at charity's UK arm

• Surpassed by highest paid employee at Marie Stopes - who earns £290k

Marie Stopes, the Social Enterprise that caters to the reproductive health and family planning  'needs', they say about themselves. Other public discriptions say it is an international non-governmental organisation providing contraception and safe abortion services in 38 countries. 

Safe? Not for the babies. 

Actually what they do is kill babies in the womb. They tear them to pieces and suck the bits out. Its big business and the Big Boss gets paid a damned sight more than 30 pieces of silver.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550648/Fury-234-000-salary-boss-Save-Children-Charity-chiefs-huge-wages-reined-say-MPs.html

Fresh demands to curb the salaries of fat cat charity bosses were made yesterday after it emerged that Save the Children is paying its top 'employee' £234,000 a year.*

*( That's about 468,000 Oz dollars) 

The individual, believed to be chief executive Jasmine Whitbread, is among 20 employees earning more than £100,000 (Au$200k) at the charity’s international body.

20 x Au$200k .... FOUR friggin' MILLION !!  800,000, $5 donations !!

Another nine are on six-figure salaries at the charity’s UK arm.

Former City executive Miss Whitbread recently starred alongside actress Dame Helen Mirren and artist Tracey Emin in Marks & Spencer’s ‘Britain’s leading ladies’ fashion advert campaign.

That huge pay packet is considerably more than the £142,500 a year paid to David Cameron, whose wife Samantha is an ambassador for Save the Children.

Our Charity Boss hopes too- that you will cough up.
Help: we are being used for emotional blackmail.

But it is surpassed by the salary of the highest paid employee at Marie Stopes International, who earns more than £290,000 a year. (Au$580,000).

This is understood to be a man: Simon Cooke, who was promoted from the Oz arm of the business. 

The Tavern is happy to expose disgraceful male rip-off merchants as well as female, in case anyone thought for a moment that we were being sexist. Heaven forbid!!

A second employee at the birth control charity is paid more than £200,000 and in total 11 people are on six-figure salaries. Charities are not required to detail by name how much their top executives are paid, and many express the sums in bands, disguising the true figures.

No choice for the babies.
They don't have wallets.

Neither Save the Children, which boasts of being ‘committed to being fully transparent to children, our donors, supporters and the public at large’, nor Marie Stopes will reveal the identities of their high-earners.

MPs condemned both the pay rates and the secrecy. Priti Patel, a member of the Commons public administration select committee, said: ‘Taxpayers and individual donors who bankroll these charities will be shocked to see the size of these colossal fat cat salaries.

‘They deserve to know how decisions are made about salaries and who is paid them. The culture of secrecy that exists in some charities must come to an end.’ 

Charlie Elphicke MP said: 

Think charity and you think volunteers rattling their collecting tins, 

vocation, compassion. 

You don’t think mega-salaries. 

It’s unacceptable and it has got to change. Charities should be open and transparent.’

Anger erupted last year after an investigation into Britain’s 14 leading foreign aid charities, which make up the Disasters Emergency Committee and receive hundreds of millions of pounds from taxpayers, revealed spiralling pay rates.

The number of executives receiving six-figure salaries had risen by nearly 60 per cent, from 19 to 30, between 2010 and 2012, despite a fall in donations and revenue at many of the organisations.

Among those identified was Justin Forsyth, a former New Labour adviser on £163,000 a year as chief executive of Save the Children UK – much less than Miss Whitbread’s assumed salary as chief executive of the charity’s umbrella body, Save the Children International.

Save the Children International refused to discuss its executives’ pay rates or identify the highest-paid employee – who, according to the charity’s 2012 accounts, received $386,893, a drop from $393,012 for the previous year.

All questions were referred to the charity’s 2012 annual report and accounts – which do not identify individuals against salary bands.

Miss Whitbread, 50, a glamorous mother of two who lives in Oxfordshire [and makes damned fine living as a confidence trickster] became the first international chief executive of Save the Children in 2010, after heading Save the Children UK since 2005.

She used to be a high-flying executive for information giant Thomson Financial in the US. 

In 2008 she said she did not do her charity job for the money.

That got even the babies who survived Marie Stopes laughing.

‘My salary (£128,000 in 2007) is less than my bonus was at Thomson,’ she said.

Oh well. That's alright then. How much can I donate ? 

According to its most recent accounts, Marie Stopes International’s highest paid employee received between £290,001 and £300,000 in 2012. American Dana Hovig was its chief executive from 2007 until May 2013, when he left to join the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The charity said: ‘As a global social enterprise, we establish remuneration to attract the best talent from the global market. As part of our commitment to transparency, we publish list remuneration figures.

I dare say they do have to pay through YOUR nose for such skilled con artists, thieves and baby-killers. It is not as though just anyone is suitable for the job. One has to be able to keep a straight face, for a start. 

‘Out of respect for team members’ privacy we do not list individual salaries by name or position.’

And no doubt it is out of respect for privacy that thay won't say how many babies they killed - all quite legally, mind you - each year.  I would not mind gueesing that for every baby killed by their 'organisation' the big boss lady gets a cent. It adds up. 

Do you remember the claims that woman - and only women - are naturally empathetic and nurturing?

The tavern serves drinks.

They are needed to wash the filthy taste from our mouths after hearing of such people.

Charity begins at home.

Give freely and well 

but Personally.

Pax.