Hard to Get

Confirming what we said a month ago the plans to dispose of nature reserves to wildlife charities have now exposed the true nature of these organisations. They are demanding more money from government. This is what we always knew. Wildlife Trusts do not exist solely for altrusitic purposes. In fact their main raison d'etre is furthering the interests of the people who work in them and by extension in the conservation industry. Everything that these people do is about getting grants from public bodies. Try asking them to do something that is indisputably the right thing to do and the answer that comes back is - no we can't do that because we can't get grants for that kind of thing. Yet they manage to meet all sorts of administrative and salary costs with little difficulty. They know in fine detail just what grants can be applied for and they focus their whole business approach on getting them. Principle and conviction is not part of the equation. Yet people are encouraged to support these charities believing that there is something more unselfish in them than in other institutions. In fact they are hardly different to a typical local authority bureaucracy. And the latter is at least more directly accountable.

The article in the Independent today tells us as much. The flawed 'localism' strategy favoured by the government, instead of giving more power to local people, seems designed to hive off assets to single issue charities whose motivation is their own and their members' interests plus institutional empire building, something local authorities have long ago abandoned because of centralised Westminster control. Now the charities have got together and presented government with an agreed ultimatum demanding more money. we're not taking anything over, they say without more taxpayers' money. But who is betting on more local accountability?