Maggie’s Centres do OK from CV fallout
According to their spokesman, Maggie’s Centres have “more than made up for” the £3,000 they were forced by threats from Christian Voice to turn down. This is excellent news for the charity, but, unfortunately, also for Stephen Green, who predicted that his deity would reward them for their principled stand.
Whether or not the charity could have made even more had they stood up to the bullying is a question which will never be answered. It does seem that their main concern was not for money, but for the welfare of the people who use their centres on a daily basis, and who would have had to face angry demonstrators if the donation had been accepted.
In a statement sent to Mediawatchwatch it was revealed that Maggie’s Centres also came under pressure from The UK Life League, an anti-abortion campaign group.
It also seems that Green’s reluctance to reveal the size of his organisation dissolves when he is making threats. In the phone conversation to MC, which he claimed on Radio 2 not to remember, he allegedly threatened to send an email to CV’s “50,000 members” (although it should be said that MC’s spokesman was unwilling to confirm this figure in a subsequent conversation with Mediawatchwatch).
So, is Green a bully and a liar? Or just a bully? 50,000 is a nice round number, the sort that might easily be plucked out of the air by a fantasist.
It has just been pointed out to me that the fact that the CV website has had only 42,000 visitors does make the 50,000 claim rather doubtful.
The CV website might have 42,000-odd hits now (or did have before it mysteriously went down), but shortly after the Maggies Centre story hit the press, it was sitting at ~28,000. The claim of 50,000 members is ridiculous. I’d say a more likely figure is a few hundred. A poorly made website, a few “prayer-vigils” by half a dozen people at a handful of events, and a few threatening phonecalls – an organisation with tens of thousands of members could do a lot more.
Im not sure CV has much of a membership system at all.
The 50,000 figure seems reasonable as a list of those contactable by email. In advance of ‘Jerry Springer’ thousands of emails were indeed going out.