Is Kate McCann's ambassadorial role sponsored by Missing People?

If Missing People does not pay I have no doubt it will be paid out of the fund.

Good questions aquila and that whole thing is dreadfully worded, particularly I think this bit: "The fundraising also helps us provide support to missing people in the UK, as well as helping their families and loved ones through the heartache of a disappearance" which kind of makes it sound like that is an afterthought that will get any spare change left after the events company has been paid and the party at the Tower of London has been paid for. 

Some people, somewhere will benefit form this stunt, but it's unlikely to be any missing people or their families is it

aquila wrote:Here is the blurb on the cycle challenge from Missing People's website:

• Day 1 – 114 miles - Edinburgh to Newcastle
  
• Day 2 – 98 miles - Newcastle to York
  
• Day 3 – 107 miles - York to Nottingham
  
• Day 4 – 73 miles - Nottingham to Northampton
  
• Day 5 – 83 miles - Northampton to London
  

Registration fees are £199 and we ask for a £2000 minimum fundraising. This covers the cost of hotels, meals, and on the road support and mechanics. The fundraising also helps us provide support to missing people in the UK, as well as helping their families and loved ones through the heartache of a disappearance. As a member of Cycle Challenge 2015, you will receive:

• Exclusive Missing People Merchandise including a cycle Jersey.
  
• Expert advice on cycling and fundraising.
  
• Dedicated support from the Missing People fundraising team to help you reach your target.
  
• On the day support including a welcome home party at the Tower of London just for you.
  

You and your fellow cyclists will be escorted to the Tower of London by Ride2Raise’s support vehicles and Tower Hamlets police. You will cycle under Tower Bridge before riding along the Wharf ­ to the finish line at one of London’s historic sites and one of the world's most famous fortresses.
We will be hosting a private welcome party in The Orchard of the Tower of London, where your friends and family will be able to take in the historic views, whilst awaiting the arrival of the cycle champions. 
These events are managed by Ride2Raise, a highly experienced events company devoted to running cycling events for charities. Their experience and dedication will mean that all you have to focus on is cycling. The hotels are booked, all meals prepared and all broken bikes fixed.

............................................................................

Perhaps someone has a better understanding of the part I've highlighted above but am I correct in believing that the registration fee and the first two thousand pounds of sponsorship from kind donations actually goes to the PR company Ride2Raise? What do Ride2Raise contribute to Missing People from the minimum £2000 fund raising or is it completely eaten up by event costs?

http://www.missingpeople.org.uk/get-involved/fundraise/take-on-a-challenge/107-cycle2015.html?showall=&start=1

That's how I read it, aquila. Another example of where the overhead makes it not worth to donate. Why would anyone want to buy Kate a Jersey. I am not worried about the meals, I believe Kate will not be using much there.

Does the financial breakdown mean that the participants in the cycle stunt are to stay in hotels, paid by other people, for 5 (6?) nights in a row?

Being fed by these same third parties?

I'd like a holiday break myself: how do I arrange for strangers to pick up the tabs for me too?

Portia wrote:Does the financial breakdown mean that the participants in the cycle stunt are to stay in hotels, paid by other people, for 5 (6?) nights in a row?

Being fed by these same third parties?

I'd like a holiday break myself: how do I arrange for strangers to pick up the tabs for me too?

It all depends if you have a family member, who can be "kidnapped".

Of course it has to be a blonde white girl, otherwise it would not work.

Portia wrote:Does the financial breakdown mean that the participants in the cycle stunt are to stay in hotels, paid by other people, for 5 (6?) nights in a row?
Being fed by these same third parties?

Short answer
YES.  
It is a massive scam.
Missing People have simultaneously advertised two posts at a combined salary in excess of 25 K.
So not a single penny of anything anyone makes in donations will advance the cause of missing children.
(Of her £ 4,000 so far, £ 2,000 will be eaten up by her own hotel bills.)

Mercifully Kate is this time the LUDICROUS VICTIM of a scam

Meanwhile, in a place far away, £ 22,110  ( or well over 30,THOUSAND euros, has been raised for the appeal against the initial finding
in the mendacious and vicious case brought against him
of the man who actually tried to FIND Madeleine.

I would go on, but everyone knows knows by now

PeterMac wrote:

Portia wrote:Does the financial breakdown mean that the participants in the cycle stunt are to stay in hotels, paid by other people, for 5 (6?) nights in a row?
Being fed by these same third parties?

Snipped

Mercifully Kate is this time the LUDICROUS VICTIM of a scam

Victim?  Maybe, maybe not.

Some years ago (1995ish, I guess), the company I worked for made huge...and I mean HUGE...Internal and external media capital out of an employee that 'sacrificed' (cough, cough) themselves to walk between our seven business/customer helpdesks that were dotted around the UK. 

The employee, let's call him "Steve Parsons", did a "Helpdesk to Helpdesk" walk for one-or-other national charity (I now have long forgotten which!). Along his route he was invariably offered accommodation by employees and franchisees but (as far as I recall) never took any of them up on the offer. Indeed, I vividly recall my first-hand involvement in the following two incidents:
(i) His refusal to stay in one free B&B (owned by a franchisee) after seeing it and, instead, walking on to the next top-branded hotel
(ii) When he failed to arrive for a booked 'promo' at one local radio station many RNMs (Retail Network Managers...aka 'Area Managers') were paged (Oh, such old-skool technology.... remember "pagers"??) to track him down and SP was found in his shorts and vest in a rather high-brow 'flea-market', having forgotten all about where he should have been at the time and 'why' he had been given 7 weeks off work to stroll around the UK!

Some facts:
- After one leg of his walk he had such bad blisters he went to A&E... and demanded the purchase of better 'trainers', ('Jogging shoes' for our USA friends, or 'Plimsols' for us Old Skool UKers)
- Every night his baggage (thankfully solely physical, and not emotional as in murdering/covering up the death of a child) was transferred from hotel to hotel by (expensive) taxi.
- His (my) employer paid his wages for his 'jolly', as well as full T&S (aka Travel and Subsistence)
- His partner, (to me, an utterly offensive woman)... who 'came on to me' whilst she undressed in an hotel room to meet him on his final leg (in the Periquito Hotel, Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells, Kent...The Hotel, I recall, was at the time featured in the popular Sunday press as a 'Knocking Shop'), had joined him several times along the route and had submitted to our Finance Dept. receipted claims for numerous items... Three very specific things that I recall were:
(a) 1st class air tickets (Gatwick to Up North) to fly to see him when he attended A&E (see above)
(b) New socks and designer undies for him (SP)
(c) Silk French Knickers for her to wear to 'greet him with' on his final leg
n.b. 'She' also 'took' the two rented iron flower holders (used for the photo-shoot at the finale) and London SE were invoiced for them (as well as losing the hire deposit)
- There was going to be a wing of a local hospital named after 'Steve'!!!! (Though credit where credit is due, we all tuned in from the next room, and the local radio D.J. did almost choke at having to perpetuate the media myth of such "interest"! :D)

So, in summary:
- The 'calcs' were run by the Finance Dept. and, despite just one person walking across the UK (with numerous offers of accommodation, etc.), these showed that the invoiced costs failed to cover the 'pledges'.
- When the walker (Let's call him Steve Parsons) suggested that the next year he be given several months off to walk several "desserts of the world" off "for charidee" he was resolutely told by Graham (the Regional Manager)... (apparently very clearly audible from way down the corridor!)... to "Eff the effing Eff Off".

I learned from this four things:
(i) Charity 'events' are probably no more than narcissistic scams
(ii) People doing such narcissistic charity events will (even if they do not realise they are doing so) incur greater costs than can ever hope to be recouped by the duped (aka 'silly') masses
(iii) Marketing departments know this full well... but, "so what?"
(iv) On a more personal note...Never be pressured into waking early (c. 5am) to 'support' the final leg of a charity event, because you'll be left to carry, (in the boot of your clapped-out old Renault), all the baggage (including numerous purchases in national 'flea-markets'!) of a narcissistic, egotistical, twat that exhibits bizarre 'mental issues'...and then have to suffer, and subsequently deny, the sexual advances of his partner trying on her silky-wares (see (c) above)... [retches, still]of the above!

So... Rant over... and after 20yrs I maybe should 'move on'...but I believe it is still valid to show what a croc-o'-sh*t such 'charidee' events actually are.

(p.s. SP... If you are reading this you do not ever want to know what JLH and I did to the sandwiches we made (& you ate!) to sustain you through your final "Chislehurst to Tunbridge Wells" leg)

(p.p.s. Jimmy Sudhra (aka Jamnadas Virji Sudra) who provided a room for you on the last night, in case you forgot, had his (1996) MBE revoked (in 2006) following conviction for sexual assault... I knew Jimmy very well, did he ever tell you about his close friendship with Thatcher and McWhirter, (re: Kent Messenger...when he was the HR Director)?  I stopped being friends with Jimmy when I met his mate (Very Senior Kent Policeman) and he preceded to tell me about a murder he'd been involved in during the Mod/Rocker years (n.b. Jimmy quickly intervened and advised the bloke talking to me that I was not a 'Mason!!!... *red faces all round*))

Things like this gets me so upset. I know it, I worked in that world, I was a witness in an investigation, but I still can't swallow the way people who just wanna do good are being ripped off.

That's why I don't see Kate as a victim in this. She must very well know it is just one big scam. But it keeps her in the news as Britain's best mother and ambassador of missing children.

Jeez, my breakfast is acting up, I need to get rid of that bad taste in my mouth.

The Postcode Lottery.

'pushed' on TV, by Fiona Phillips.

Missing People.

'ambassador' Fiona Phillips.

Missing People 'funding donations' received FROM...................Postcode Lottery.

2+2 DOES = 4!

This FP!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/so-what-is-a-parent-to-do-474097

We do things we might not do at home - there's no way the McCanns would have left their tots sleeping in their bedrooms while they went to the local restaurant back in Leicestershire.

We often left ours sleeping upstairs in a hotel room while we dined downstairs until one night, when they were two and five, we were told they were running up and down the landing screaming and calling for Mummy.

I have never felt so wretched - seeing two tear-stained faces looking questioningly at me as if to say "Why did you leave us?" is an image that has stayed with me.

Now we take them with us or leave them with babysitters - babysitters who are sometimes male, often complete strangers whose credentials we don't check.
-------------------------------------------------------------
"NOW we take them with us or leave them with babysitters - babysitters who are sometimes male, often complete strangers whose credentials we don't check."

OFTEN COMPLETE (MALE) STRANGERS WHOSE 'CREDENTIALS' WE DON'T CHECK!

Regarding her 'saying' about 'holidays' i think she 'said'................'holidays are for, where you bung the kids in the creche all day, and settle down all day with a good book'

I can 'see' WHY FP's 'credentials' were an ambassadorial 'godsend' to Missing People!

LEAVES her kids 'alone', out of sight.

LEAVES her kids, ALONE, with complete (male) STRANGERS.

They, MP, don't 'want' boring, run of the mill, responsible 'people' representing THEM!

I'd NEVER 'get a job' there!

(But they don't mind the 'boring' people 'raising' the £1.75 MILLION a year, they 'need', to pay for 'staff salaries, benefits, pensions' etc.,)