Smaller Charities Funded For Political Purposes

Politicspeak must be one of the most elequent of languages in that the most innocent of phrases can be used to describe what will transpire to be a hardly innocent purpose.

The latest utterance by Liam Byrne, Cabinet Office Minister, is a recent example in the use of this language with his announcement that smaller charities are to be provided funding for 'innovative campaigning' and that he was of the opinion government should be working hard to make sure that people who don’t get their voices heard in this country do get the voices heard.

On the basis that a growing number of 'charities' receive the bulk of their funding from the government - thus making them nothing more than government 'mouthpieces' - it will be interesting to see the list of those 'charities' that have been awarded funding. It is also not hard to guess what the phrase 'innovative campaigning' will involve, nor what is the intended purpose.

When the government holds 'consultations', the purpose of which is to gain the public's views, envariably those 'consulted' are government bodies or government funded charities - hardly consulting the public is it? If Liam Byrne truly wanted to talk to the people whose voice is ignored then he would talk directly with the electorate!

What Liam Byrne, lost in his own state-funded little world, seems to have forgotten is that at some point in the next 14 months he is going to have to talk to the electorate and I would imagine that he already has a fair idea of what they will say to him!