The government is now actively encouraging public money into the hands of the charity sector despite there being, as admitted by many in the sector, some serious unprofessionalism. Handing out public money to charities makes their activities unaccountable - even less accountable than private companies where we can at least buy shares or arrange product boycotts and influence decisions that way.
The Mayor recently announced £30m of Londoners' money will be spent on "capacity building" in the charity sector. The money will, wherever possible, be given to crappy little local charities who are inefficient and often inexperienced at delivering the stuff they are meant to be doing. A lot of that money could directly compete with small businesses setting up across London as social enterprises aim to get a slice of the public dosh.
The reason why is because, when the LDA last doled out the cash it all went to private contractors who could make promises to "get people into training and then jobs" as opposed to a lot of these tin-pot organisations who, therefore, did not win the cotnracts to handle the money. This time around the big organisations are deliberately excluded and the bar has been lowered in terms of what the organisations have to achieve in order to qualify for funding.
The problem with this is that this money is meant to be spent on regenerating London. So the poorest Londoners are the ones who are actually going to lose out. And when it appears to cost 20x more to help every kid out of poverty then the usual suspects will start fucking bleating about how corporate involvement has taken all the profit.
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