Express & Star comment: Oxfam has lost public trust, its whole ruling board needs to step aside
Many people have often wondered precisely where their charity donations end up.
When we see the gilded offices of Oxfam and other charities, and the six-figure sums handed out to those members of the metropolitan elite that tend to run such organisations, people start to ask questions.
It is easy to understand why the merry-go-round that exists among the top public sector earners is a constant source of frustration for many ordinary working men and women.
Take, for example, Caroline Thomson – the daughter of a Labour politician – who left her £330,000-a-year job at the BBC with a payout of £670,000, and is now an Oxfam trustee.
Incredibly, the number of Oxfam staff taking home more than £100,000-a-year stands at 11, including chief executive Mark Goldring who picks up more than £125,000.
Oxfam was once a byword for dedicated charity work.
Hypocritical
These days it has become synonymous with the type of hypocritical, anti-capitalist stance that you would expect from Jeremy Corbyn's Momentum wing of the Labour party.
The Oxfam Haiti scandal will understandably cause many people to question the contributions they make to charities.
This is a tragedy for the thousands of dedicated volunteers whose goodwill has been badly let down by those in charge.
Oxfam urgently needs to regain public trust. To do so it will need to take drastic action.
Its entire ruling board should stand aside, taking the highly paid executives who have overseen this shameful episode with it.
However, the concern is that they would only be replaced by yet more urbanite placemen and women, whose mission would be mainly to weaponise Oxfam in its fairly blatant political political struggle.
Tarnished
It would be naive in the extreme to imagine that only Oxfam suffers from this behind-the-scenes malaise.
The Charity Commission, which has launched a statutory inquiry into Oxfam, much take a much stronger line with the bodies it regulates.
The reality of helping developing countries through non-government organisations does not always match the images depicted on television adverts.
So far as Oxfam is concerned, this must be a turning point for a tarnished organisation.
It needs to get back to its core values and dispense with those who have led it astray.
