Amidst other forms of self-promotion, readers might have missed Jan Whitbourn using local press columns to plug her support of the British Legion.
Probably she thinks there are easy votes there for a Tory councillor, given the Legion’s hitherto strong PR.
But whatever one thinks of the country’s history or the sacrifice made by veterans, the recent shutting down of respite care while the British Legion holds millions in reserves shows that it can and has been questioned (including by veterans themselves) whether it does the best job possible of supporting veterans.
A few years ago, I researched the British Legion’s annual report, a document which registered charities are obliged to publish to satisfy its obligations to regulators.
This revealed that even then the British Legion spent over £30m a year on staff salaries, including one annual salary of about £150,000.
The Legion may argue that such an “investment” helps a “great cause”.
In other words, their business model is exactly the same as that of the overseas aid charities, who are volubly and hypocritically slated in the right-wing media on account of the size of staff salaries.
How much better could our veterans be supported if the organisations’ staff were prepared to accept a little less than £30m a year in reimbursement?
Surely staff concerned could live off a little less than £150,000 a year, and such a sacrifice would be piffling compared to that made by the wartime generation?
And yes, I do know what I am talking about.
While working for a charity for many years, I voluntarily declined 25 per cent of the pay to which I was entitled, in order to make a direct contribution to the cause it represented.
When I left, finally senior staff admitted that there was no one else in the organisation of equivalent grade subjected to performance management making an equivalent sacrifice; they were all raking in as much as possible.
I won’t be supporting that charity any more; but I also won’t be supporting the British Legion. Or people like Whitbourn.
G Kent
Mountbatten Avenue
Pinchbeck
