From “arts-based approaches” to gender violence in Ecuador to a £840,000 study of ‘The Europe that Gay Porn Built’, the Arts and Humanities Research Council is squandering vast sums of public money.
It has been a while since I spoiled Daily Sceptic readers with some examples of taxpayer-funded waste. Today’s examples are university grants, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). In my view, AHRC should be cut immediately by any sane Government. It is responsible for wasting colossal sums of capital on the likes of ‘The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000’, an £840,000 study that is still ongoing.
AHRC falls under the remit of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a quango that was awarded £8,811 million by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology in 2025–26. AHRC, in turn, received £70 million from that budget. Below, you can get a good idea of how it has been spending our money.
Using arts-based approaches to tackle gender-based and racialised violence in the context of crises and extractivism in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, £407,524 (Northumbria University):
Esmeraldas province (henceforth Esmeraldas) is amongst the poorest in Ecuador, characterised by state neglect, inadequate infrastructure and services, and the presence of multiple forms of socially and environmentally damaging resource extraction. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the already fragile situation in Esmeraldas has further deteriorated, with drugs-related violence, gang warfare and organised crime bringing heightened instability, including increasing levels of GBV. The situation
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Reform needs to use the egs from this article to highlight waste and that they would axe the quango responsible, highlighting where the money would be better spent. Eg. Apprenticeships
Oh my days!!! Don’t suppose there’s any spare mulla for researching the “socio-economic impact of asylum-seeker housing on host communities”?
Is it any wonder President Trump won in a andslide? Whatever happens in the USA, follows in the UK 🇬🇧
I’d love to know what the queer nonbinary Green MSP did his Phd in.
My bet is “The oppression of gender non-conforming people in Kolkata by the East India Company between1720 and 1770”
Reform needs to promise in its manifesto ‘to cut waste wherever they find it’ so they have the ability to cut crap like this without being specific, rememberng when queried about their mandate for Net Zero bollocks, the Tories pointed to a vague mention in their manifesto.
I do wonder if Reform are keeping their powder dry on these type of points, I hope if they are it’s because they have a strategy they are following… perhaps it’s that they don’t want to ‘scare the horses’ too much, too early… personally I’d be signalling it all now, however an argument could be made for waiting as well…
They are obviously making some statements, occasionally clumsily admittedly, but I suspect that they are following the ming vase policy of the Labour party in the run up to the last election. Just as Starmer knew that the Tories were making such a bollocks up, all he had to do was not say anything, so Reform with this current disaster of a Government.
Reform needs to use the egs from this article to highlight waste and that they would axe the quango responsible, highlighting where the money would be better spent. Eg. Apprenticeships
We could really do with another ‘Grievance Studies’ hoax like Boghossian, Lindsay and Pluckrose gave us several years ago. This brain-rot has gone on for too long without one, especially in the UK.
Was this the one where they published a paper called “The imaginary penis as a social construct” which included all the right buzz words/phrases including the classic “when a man sits on the tube with his legs apart he’s raping the air around him”.
To be fair there’s also a problem with pay to publish journals in any subject. Several years ago a hoax paper about metachloridians that claimed to be written by Dr Lucas George and Dr Ann E King was published in some rag.
I’ve only got as far as the first one so far, but it has all the necessary buzz words and phrases to guarantee funding:
‘…amongst the poorest’
‘…socially and environmentally damaging’
‘…gender-based violence’
‘…climate change-induced crises’
‘…critical feminists’
‘…anti-racist’
Once the awarding panel had taken a couple of minutes to come down from their climax after having read the application, they must have been falling over themselves to throw taxpayers’ money at it.
This stuff should make me angry. It does, but I don’t react with anger. It’s just grim acceptance that this is the Britain of The Left – the Britain of the Uniparty.
Looks like a good way of funding extended holidays abroad.
For me this illustrates the general principle: where there is shortage, there is almost always waste.
Just like in the communist countries where factories would churn out stuff nobody wanted or needed, while at the same time you struggled to get hold of a bag of screws.
Just like dirt poor countries with starving populations that somehow still have the money to fight wars over a peace of desert land. (Ammunition is not cheap.)
Here, too: there is no money for pothole repairs but there is always, always money for more quangos, regulations, DEI training courses, useless university studies, politically motivated “arts”, green policies.
The police don’t care about mugging, shoplifting, burglary because – of course – they haven’t got the resources but there are always resources to send out six officers to investigate a tweet.
Can’t we do this a bit closer to home, like in England:
“1) the renewal of ancestral governance, 2) environmental stewardship, 3) language revival, and 4) cultural revitalisation.”
Could start with councillors being British citizenship, encouraging some ethic groups not leave rubbish everywhere, make everyone speak English and make St.Georges day a bank holiday.
Why not make the foundation of England the National Day, especially as next year we celebrate 1100 years?
Excellent idea!
The thing needs shutting down, frankly they are taking the P.
Out of the tens of thousands I hand over to the state every single year, how much do I get returned in infrastructure and services that I need? I get the bins emptied – not all of them as the green waste one is now excluded from the council tax theft – and see the odd pothole repaired once in a while, but that’s pretty much it. The rest funds propaganda and political beliefs that actively punish me and my family. So why the hell do I pay? Why does anyone pay? Because if you don’t you’ll be punished. We have a name for this – extortion. And they’ve embedded this criminal act into the framework of our society so deeply that it’s almost impossible to cut the thing out. One of many examples that highlight that it’s the system, not the government, that must be replaced.
You have to wonder whether the £8.8 trillion isn’t actually a typo.
Well done Fatima from Mombasa, refusing the Covid jab! Fatima is right. ‘They’ don’t care, and people are indeed disposable to certain ‘institutional structures.’ I doubt that the ‘researcher’ will come to any correct conclusions about the jab, its necessity, effectiveness and safety, though. If he did, then I suspect he’d be told to leave vaxx damage out. I guess we’re hanging into a lot of potholes, if this farce continues, being a perfect example of government being the opposite of what it ought to be. Thanks again to Lockdown Sceptics, amongst others, for keeping me and the Mrs. alive from the Pfizer Tizer.
“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome”. This is perfectly displayed here.
If someone is going to throw money around supporting pseudo-intellectual research, then that’s what you will get.
Once again a combination of weak Government and a far too powerful (captured) quango. The Tories could have addressed this if they had wanted…
You cannot be serious! Almost as bad as the waste of taxpayers money is the number of university people who must think these subjects have any real point/meaning/ relevance
Some good news in today’s Mail that universities are going to be cutting jobs at 4 out 5 universities.
It speaks volumes for the attitude of government towards spending taxpayers’ money that this shit is considered worthy of support.
Well done Charlotte for highlighting thos, but you need more visibility, no point preaching to the choir here, you need a slot on talk or gb news.
Hear, hear!