Camila put kids before accounts

It’s sad to see the former chief of the Kids’ Company charity being dragged through the dirt for mismanagement of an organisation that has been a lifeline for whole communities of neglected, abused children in inner-city London.

Camila Batmanghelidjh is being dragged through the dirt like a common criminal, when her only crime was to put the children she loves before the important stuff we all hate: paperwork and finances. I was with Camilla a while ago, discussing a plan to try to get companies to donate beds for the hundreds of kids who’d never slept in one, when her phone rang.

She answered, said “calm down, slowly, slowly”... then turned to me and said, “I’m really sorry. I’ve got to take this”. I sat there while she gently and patiently talked the caller out of trying to take her own life.

As a former colleague said this week: “Camilla was an incredibly generous person. And I think unfortunately the flip side of that is she’s seen now as profligate”. Quite.

Camila Batmanghelidjh put no limits on time for her beloved charges, the children whose lives she rescued, but she had no head at all for business.

6The Shadow Chancellor boarded

a bus on Wednesday, where he read his newspaper, before hopping off at Parliament Square on the way to his office. Once inside the House of Commons he stood up to admit his U-turn over adhering to the Chancellor’s Charter for Fiscal Responsibility was “embarrassing”… “but”, he said, “a bit of humility never goes amiss, so it’s best to admit to it”.

The politicians may have scoffed, but his honesty will have been appreciated by voters not accustomed to hearing that word being used in connection with British politics.