SHARPSHOOTER

As Jeremy Cooper becomes the latest RSPCA chief executive to exit through the revolving doors, will anything change at the charity?

Isee the Charity Commission is talking about getting a grip on the RSPCA. Yeah, right. The Countryside Alliance has been highlighting the shortcomings of Britain’s richest animal welfare charity for years. The issues have been debated in the House of Commons. Both the Daily Mail and The Sun have exposed questionable antics at the charity. The recent unexplained departure of the RSPCA’S chief executive, Jeremy Cooper, after just 14 months in the post is par for the course. He is the third one through the revolving door in just five years.

Mr Cooper’s predecessor was one Gavin Grant. In this column on 17 July 2013, I wrote: “…the current chief executive of the RSPCA is as slippery as a bar of soap. He may be clever. But is he the right person to lead a famous charity? It will be interesting to see how long he lasts.”

Seven months after I posed that question, Mr Grant was gone. “Medical advice” was cited as the reason for his departure. But he turned up again, working for the Liberal Democrats as a county chairman. Unfortunately, as I wrote in my column of 1 July 2015, he soon became embroiled in a row about dirty tricks and was suspended by the party’s high command. As I outlined, it wasn’t the first time in his career that Mr Grant had faced allegations. I asked: “How on earth did somebody with his personal qualities and values end up being selected as the chief executive of a major charity in the first place?” Then, on 18 November 2015, I observed: “…the RSPCA’S reputation has never been lower. It is currently having difficulty finding anybody who will even take up the position of chief executive.”

Last year it did find somebody — Jeremy Cooper. He gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph in which he suggested that the RSPCA’S downward spiral into hard-line animal activism was over. On 25 May 2016 I welcomed the new appointment, but wondered if the change was “real and sustainable”. I explained: “…there are still a number of hardcore activists swilling around the RSPCA’S governing body and higher management structure”.

This became all too clear when the RSPCA’S chief press spokesman made an aggressive and ill-informed tweet in response to a farmer’s enquiry about the relationship between badgers and hedgehogs, as I reported in my column on 17 May. His attitude seemed at odds with his own chief executive, who had previously told the Telegraph: “We don’t have an issue with the need to manage badgers.”

Now Mr Cooper has been ousted and the Charity Commission is expressing concern about the RSPCA’S governance. Yawn.

Badgering BA

Dairy farming is tough. It is made even tougher when TB strikes. The number of UK dairy farms has halved over the past decade. Not that pro-badger-cull farmers get any sympathy from ageing guitarist and chief badger-hugger Brian May.

However, it has emerged that Mr May is himself no stranger to hardship. We know this because he took to the blogosphere to rant that the viewing from the window of his first-class BA flight to Los Angeles had been ruined by a new interior layout. “It completely sucks,” he raged. According to The Times, BA charges about £10,300 for a first-class ticket from London to Los Angeles. Poor Mr May; I feel his pain.

“The Charity Commission is talking about getting a grip on the RSPCA. Yeah, right”