Barons Fest Erased: A Masterclass in Orwellian Charity Mismanagement
The League Against Cruel Sports: Erasing Barons Fest and Accountability in One Orwellian Stroke
In the latest chapter of “How to Run a Charity Without a Hint of Accountability”, the League Against Cruel Sports has managed not only to cancel a centenary celebration but also to obliterate its very existence from public memory. Barons Fest, the much-touted July extravaganza marking “100 years of compassion,” now exists only as a digital ghost, exhumed from the Internet Archive. Even the Ministry of Truth might have blushed at the efficiency of this vanishing act.
Of course, the real trick here isn’t just the cancellation—though scrapping a milestone event without explanation is no small feat—but the complete lack of transparency. Not a peep from the League’s Senior Management Team, who clearly studied under the masters of obfuscation. Forget informing donors about the sunk costs or why the festivities flopped. As far as they’re concerned, if it’s not on Google, it never happened.
And who are these magicians of mismanagement? Leading the disappearing act is Chair Dan Norris, a man who somehow juggles being West of England Mayor, MP, and dog-influencer extraordinaire. When not posing with his loyal Alfred, Norris leaves the actual decisions to the Senior Management Team, a group whose talents lie more in evasion than in event planning.
Then there’s trustee Astrid Clifford, who can always be relied upon to turn controversy into an art form on Twitter. Ashleigh Fiona Brown, meanwhile, is presumably still on holiday and blissfully unaware of the latest PR disaster. Viktoria Petrova? Busy polishing her LinkedIn profile and collecting yet another trustee title for reasons best known to herself.
As for Acting CEO Chris Luffingham, well, perhaps he thought attending to the little people—you know, the donors who actually pay his wages—was beneath someone of his evident brilliance. Luffingham, after all, has positioned himself as a political strategist extraordinaire, far too busy plotting his next career move to bother with trivialities like Barons Fest or keeping supporters informed. Wasting his talents on mere transparency? What an absurd proposition.
Meanwhile, the Senior Management Team remains a shadowy ensemble, excelling more in erasure than leadership. Between this and the September AGM cancellation—also pulled at the eleventh hour with no explanation—they’ve perfected the art of treating donors with utter contempt.
This Orwellian penchant for rewriting history might amuse if it weren’t so costly. How much donor money has gone into these cancelled events? Why the secrecy? It’s as if the League’s leaders have decided that transparency and accountability are relics of the past, alongside humane principles.
As Winston Smith rewrote Oceania’s history, so too does the League attempt to erase its failures. Yet the memory hole isn’t as deep as they’d hope. The donors and supporters who make their work possible deserve better than a vanishing act. It’s time for the League to face the music—if only they hadn’t cancelled the band.
