Victory for founder of kids’ charity
THE founder of charity Kids Company won a High Court battle with the Official Receiver.
Camila Batmanghelidjh and seven fellow trustees, including ex-BBC boss Alan Yentob, fought off a bid to ban them from being company directors.
The charity for vulnerable children collapsed in 2015 after allegations of financial mismanagement.
There were unproven claims of physical and sexual abuse.
Ms Batmanghelidjh, 57, told the court: “By the time that Kids Company was cleared of wrongdoing it was too late, goodwill had deserted us and funders withdrew their support.”
The Official Receiver argued that she and the former trustees were “unfit” to hold company directorships.
But Mrs Justice Falk rejected the case in a ruling yesterday.
Ms Batmanghelidjh said: “I hope this judgment will be the first step in refuting the many lies that have been told.”
JRICHARD has written with good grace many times about the period when he was a secret smoker. He told me he’d given up but I caught him having a crafty fag outside on the drive.
We both laugh now at his preposterous denials: “What cigarette? Where?” as tobacco smoke streamed from his mouth and nostrils.
But even without that, I would have known he was lying – he was speaking so fast. New research backs me up: the journal Nature Communications reports that liars don’t choose their words with careful emphasis: they gabble. That’s the giveaway.
RRADIO 4’s Saturday Live ferrets out quirky stories from listeners. Last week one revealed that her grandfather worked for a UK carmaker between the wars.
He spoke good German so in the early 1930s was sent to Berlin on business.
One day he was in a train carriage sitting opposite two smartly-dressed men: one of them looked familiar somehow.
They noticed his brochures and began teasing him, saying BMW and VW were far superior to British makes.
After some friendly banter, a serious conversation about cars ensued and they exchanged cards on parting.
The distinctive German’s name was... Adolf Hitler.