Kids Company, the allegory

I know that people who believe that juvenile delinquents are best dealt with by experiencing a short sharp shock in a no-nonsense detention centre will never agree with me, but I believe Camila Batmanghelidjh was onto something with her original approach to the problem of the violence and drug addiction affecting London’s youthful underclass. (Original in all senses of the word)

Unfortunately, success in overcoming those early battles with authority and convention went to her head, and she didn’t understand that running an enormous charitable/publicly funded organisation wasn’t  where her talents lay. Frankly, she does appear to have become what the Telegraph critic Jasper Rees described as “paranoid, narcissistic, belligerent, manipulative, self-pitying, evasive, irresponsible and needy.”

The Telegraph critic was of course reviewing Lynn Alleway’s film, shown last night on BBC 2. It seems that Camila had invited Lynn, the maker of an earlier, upbeat documentary about Kids Company, to repeat the exercise for the purpose of correcting the ‘malign distortions’ in the media. In the event Camila was hoist by her own petard. (Mind you, some of the emotive language in Jasper Rees’s critique indicated that Camila’s depiction of the media was not entirely wrong.)

Oh what a tangled mess we weave when we let ourselves become all bloated and out of control. The story of the rise and fall of Camila Batmanghelidjh could be a lesson to us all. It’s a little bit like the refugee crisis, where showing mercy and generosity to the deserving, ballooned into an avalanche of self destruction. 

It’s also an allegory for the BBC itself. (What set out to be a mission for goodness and enlightenment turned into a bloated tangle of propaganda and populism)