Big lottery fund are sensitive souls

Today I took the chance to revisit the discussion board of the Big Lottery Fund who I blogged about here. The gist of the post was that the Fund is refusing to make awards to organisations like the RNLI and the Samaritans on the grounds that they cannot show they are targeting the government's preferred "disadvantaged" groups.

I ended the post by suggesting readers take a visit to the discussion board and post a polite critique of their policy. But when I went back today, I was completely gobsmacked to find that my comments had been deleted! I had been extremely polite - I think the strongest word I used was "shameful", which hardly counts as abusive.

Interestingly I also said on my post that I thought that any application involving saving of lives should take preference over any that didn't, and pointed out that refusing tiny grants to the RNLI was pretty appalling when the fund was making grants for "Green Gyms for conservation volunteers", as shown on their website. I think they may have found this all a bit too close to the mark, because I can find no reference to Green Gyms on their site any more.

Fortunately by the wonders of Google, I can confirm that I wasn't dreaming.

The poor sensitive souls at the Big Lottery Fund need to learn that denying criticism is happening is not going to help them. Their best defence is the truth - which is that they are implementing government policy. Then their political masters (well, mistresses actually) can do their jobs and stand up and defend what they believe in.

Update:
Found the link on the Big Lottery Fund site again