A CORRUPT ELECTION WITH THE VOICES OF POVERTY MUFFLED BY THE CHARITY COMMISSION -

LETTER FROM TAP PUBLISHED BY THE GUARDIAN 23 APRIL 2015.

Never again must we go through an election for the mother of parliaments while the protests of charities that work with and for the poorest citizens are muffled by a ruling from the Charity Commission. Oxfam’s “perfect storm” tweet in June 2014, related to a report by it and two other charities on the impact of austerity, was an entirely reasonable analogy given all the facts and circumstances of the impact of cuts, caps and council tax on the health and wellbeing of the people they serve since the last election.

The commission decided that the tweet “could be misconstrued by some as party political campaigning”. That cuts to the heart of the human right of free speech in a democracy. There is a smell of corruption in the notion that receipt of funding from taxpayers by charities directly from government, or from donations that recover donors’ taxes, pays for a gag on truthful and effective protests against poverty.

Rev Paul Nicolson

Taxpayers Against Poverty