Last week, a self-described “influential think tank” advised that the “UK must seek EU membership to protect our prosperity, security and democracy”.

In a press release about its new report, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said that “becoming a member of the EU should be the UK’s medium goal” and that “the EU that Britain would join today is fundamentally different from the one it left.”

The report gained traction in a number of publications such as The i Paper, Guardian and New Statesman, with the latter suggesting that “Andy Burnham now has a blueprint to rejoin the EU”.

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Should government accounts be able to block people on X? It’s a question I was forced to return to AGAIN after finding out I am blocked by the Mayor of London’s Culture Team.

I am also blocked by The Green Party, Islington Council (my former council) and the Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Torsten Bell, among countless others.

I believe the Culture Team account didn’t like me drawing attention to an event they advertised about “queer birding”, which is part of “Haringey Unearthed”, “a grants programme delivered as part of Haringey’s London Borough of Culture.”

So it’s only fair that I draw even more attention to this terrible programme, and the taxpayer funding involved.

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A round-up of my articles this week:

This list will be updated as and when.

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Meet Christa Rottensteiner. I suspect most Brits will have never heard of her, but she is in charge of the “International Organization for Migration (UN Migration) in UK”. Her official title is “Chief of Mission for the UK, International Organization for Migration”:

Rottensteiner was appointed Chief of Mission UK in 2022, having previously been Deputy Head of Migration and Modern Slavery Department at the Department for International Development (now the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office). The FCDO has awarded enormous grants to the United Nations over the years.

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Recently I visited London and took this photo. It sums up parts of the city rather well:

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Another day, another stupid example of how the UK’s foreign aid budget has been spent.

Taxpayers were charged £4,809,498 for the project Gender Responsive Resilience and Intersectionality in Policy and Practice (GRRIPP) - Networking Plus Partnering for Resilience.

This was funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), which was awarded £1.5 billion of the UK’s Official Development Assistance between 2016-21 (and was wound down in 2022). The GCRF was designed to “addres[s] the United Nations sustainable development goals.”

Taking place at University College London between Nov 19 - Apr 24, the GRRIPP Network+ aimed to “build an international, network of scholars, policy makers and practitioners to promote gender and intersectionality.”

It was led by Professor Maureen Fordham, whose UCL profile highlights what United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) she has met:

A UCL webpage about the now-closed GRRIPP project explains that it used “four interconnecting themes” (even though I can see five…). These include “Critical Theory” and “Decoloniality”:

Its abstract is filled with paragraphs of leftist gobbledygook such as:

We seek to establish a radical vision which begins and centres upon gender and intersectionality rather than adding it, post hoc, to domains and sectors. The primary challenge we identify is to embed gender and intersectionality in resilience thinking, policy making and practice through better understanding the drivers of gender inequality of risk and resilience in order to build gender responsive resilience (GRR).

&

Our horizontally-structured "ideas space" allows for critical and situated perspectives and indigenous and de-colonial knowledges to emerge based on, inter alia, non-Anglophone sources and lived experiences.

&

Beneficiaries will also include local practitioners and activists, those working in NGOs and with social movements, and also educators from grass roots to university levels.

&:

A conscious aim of GRRIPP is to decolonise knowledge production and provide levels of autonomy for regional teams which we hope will have impact in our regions of influence.

What a load of utter nonsense! You can read the whole thing here.

The project’s “Outcomes” aren’t much better. These include a “GRRIPP training workshop on Gender and Territory” in South America…

… and “Elaboration of five local climate change adaptation plans with gender mainstreaming in five municipalities in Argentina.”

A YouTube page about the project explains that it “commissioned more than 20 research projects across Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, and Southern Africa”, with videos on subjects such as “Moving towards a SMART, Inclusive South Asia Disaster & Resilience”:

One of the videos on the YouTube site has as little as 7 views at the time of writing:

And the rest aren’t much better:

Could this be because it’s all total bollocks?

Unfortunately, it’s not the first ridiculous project funded by the GCRF. You can read more here:

A round-up of my articles this week:

£4,487,566 of the UK foreign aid’s budget was awarded to a study on “Deliberate Self Harm (DSH)” in South Asia, I can reveal.

GCRF: South Asia Self Harm research capability building initiative (SASHI) is a project that took place across two phases at Bangor University and then the University of Manchester (between September 2017 to March 2025).

Its abstract explained…

Our main aim is to produce new and robust information to inform the understanding of the nature of DSH in the context of profound social, political and economic challenges in low and middle-income countries (LMIC) such as India and Pakistan.

… and that:

The work will be of direct relevance to other Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) and will also be of interest to people working with minority immigrant communities in the UK and services providing support following an episode of DSH.

Forty eight organisations worked on the research, including British universities and foreign ones, such as Bahria University (based in Islamabad, Pakistan), University of Karachi (Karachi, Pakistan) and Raju Hospital (Chennai, India).

A page about the project, authored by The Centre for Mental Health and Society, reads “We have a growing portfolio of self-harm and suicide prevention research at the Centre for Mental Health and Society. A major focus of the work has been in South Asia.”

Catherine Robinson, who is the lead researcher on the project, worked on another study about self-harm in South Asia (awarded £976,251 from the taxpayer-funded Medical Research Council). Titled A Youth Culturally adapted Manual Assisted Psychological therapy (Y-CMAP) for adolescent Pakistani patients with a recent history of self-harm, its abstract explained:

“There are more than 100,000 acts of self-harm in Pakistan annually. The aim of Y-CMAP is to evaluate the clinical and cost-effectiveness of this culturally adapted psychological therapy in adolescent patients with a history of self-harm. Our study in Karachi determined the effectiveness of a 6-8 session CBT-based intervention (C MAP) in adults who had recently self-harmed.”

Robinson’s grants, listed on her academic profile, include: “Improving assessment and treatment of mental disorder after Deliberate Self Harm in South India, 2015 – 2017”.

The South Asia Self Harm research capability building initiative was funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), which was given £1.5 billion of the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget.

The GCRF was designed to “address challenges faced by developing countries”, and counted as part of the UK’s pledge to spend 0.7 percent of gross national income on ODA.

I don’t want to sound terribly mean - I care as much as the next person about alleviating mental illness and psychological suffering - but the UK is not the world’s saviour, and I am not sure why we are funding research on self-harm in South Asia. Let me know your thoughts.

More:

Yesterday I wrote about the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), which I was amazed to discover this week (even years in to my research, I still find new things all the time). I knew that we were funding a lot of daft foreign projects, but some grants actually came out of the foreign aid budget!

You will be pleased to know (when I show you more details of what it funded) that the GCRF was wound down in 2022.

But not before it wasted a whole load of taxpayers’ money on niche foreign research. Its budget for 2016-21 was £1.5 billion!

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It’s not the first time I’ve mentioned this, but the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has become an outlet for foreign aid.

To show you what I mean, I have randomly searched for Kenya on the UKRI grant database.

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On Saturday (10 October) it was World Homeless Day, and Asylum Aid had an important message about “non-British nationals” (aka foreigners).

“MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW THIS ABOUT HOMELESSNESS…” it posted on Instagram…

… before explaining that “Over half of rough sleepers in London are non-British nationals.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m not surprised at all; in fact, I wonder if the figure is much higher. It makes sense when Sadiq Khan is constantly telling the world that “London is open” - aka “please move here” - and increasing numbers of Councils/ Boroughs are signing up to City of Sanctuary’s scheme (effectively open-borders through the backdoor).

Then there’s the large amounts of taxpayer funding is going towards asylum and migration charities. Take Asylum Aid, which received £1,150,070 from taxpayers between 2021-25 and is part of the Helen Bamber Foundation Group, which received £1,194,270 from taxpayers for the same period.

And that’s not all…

To end the “vicious cycle” of homelessness among “non-British nationals”, Asylum Aid is also going to be working with Refugee and Migrant Justice, which received £3,196,440 from taxpayers between 2020-24. Together the charities will work to give people access to:

- Medical support
- Suitable accommodation
- Work and educational opportunities

If that’s not enough incentives for everyone to move to the UK, yesterday The Daily Mail reported that “Nineteen council areas are accommodating more than ten times as many asylum seekers as households of homeless people”.

Again, it doesn’t surprise me - but it’s good to have the data.

A round-up of my articles this week:

Sorry to depress everyone but I’m back with EVEN MORE examples of asylum and migration charities, which I have added to my lists:

The total for every taxpayer-funded charity I have calculated (92 so far) is £2.6 billion (across the last five published tax years), with £316,679,329 of this going towards 55 asylum and migration charities.

What a complete mess! Without further ado:

Positive Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (PAFRAS) (£439,400, 2021-25)
PAFRAS “aims to end destitution, increase access to social justice and advocate for the rights of refugees and people seeking asylum in Leeds”, adding “We resist the hostile environment and strive for systemic change.” It helps asylum seekers find legal representation and to understand the asylum system. Like most charities (not just in the asylum and migration space), it is very vocal about politics. In April 2024 it posted on X that “THE RWANDA ACT IS INHUMANE AND VIOLATES BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS”:

Refugee Roots (£137,130, 2021-25)
The charity “helps asylum seekers and refugees build relationships and navigate the complexities of building a new life in the UK”, according to its website. Its “empowerment initiatives include befriending, accompanying asylum seekers to appointments, information, advice and guidance, as well as supportive groups and activities, such as free English conversation classes.”

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By radical I am including:

• Refugee and asylum support - which drives open borders

• Anything that entrenches identity politics

Without further ado, here are 10 radical grants funded by Children in Need.

Thanks Pudsey!

Anti Racist Cumbria - £50,000.00
“This project will empower Black children and young people from Cumbri…

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I’m sure everyone will be delighted to know that the UK Reparations Conference 2026 is scheduled for Saturday 17th of this month.

Hosted at Friends House, Euston (the central offices of Quakers in Britain), the event is titled “From Resolution to Repair: Building on the Global Mandate for Reparations” and has been organised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Afrikan Reparations.

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The total funding accounted for below, courtesy of the National Lottery, is £10,179,091.

NB. Yesterday I made an error and forgot to add Suffolk Refugee Support in - so I had £7,822,856 as the total. Apologies.

Notes:

• The grants below are all from the National Lottery Community Fund, apart from Refugee Action, which also received funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

• There are no timelines for funding (as I do with taxpayer funding eg. 2021-25) as they are quite broad on 360 Giving (the site I extracted the data from).

Without further ado… Here are five asylum and migration charities funded by the National Lottery:

Suffolk Refugee Support - £2,356,235 across 6 grants

The charity offers “quality independent advice and support” on “education, employment, access to immigration advice, health, housing, utilities, welfare benefits etc”. It has been critical of government policies, including “the passing of the UK government’s Illegal Migration Bill” and the Safety of Rwanda Bill, which it said it was “appalled” by.

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A round-up of my articles this week

Plus, Neil O’Brien has said that the Conservatives plan to make cuts to the DCMS, and that “there is plenty of scope to cut wasteful spending” in Arts Council England (ACE), which I was very glad to hear. I thought readers might like a recap on some of my past articles about ACE:

It really beggars belief but Comic Relief awarded £340,000 to the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID).

The £340,000 is comprised of two grants worth £300,000 and £40,000, as you can see below:

BID doesn’t beat around the bush about its aims. Its website explains:

BID is an independent charity that exists to end immigration detention in the UK.

We dream of a world free of immigration detention, where people are not deprived of their liberty or deported from their home.

We aim to end immigration detention in the UK through the provision of legal advice, information and representation alongside research, policy advocacy and strategic litigation.

On Instagram it is very vocal about its beliefs…

… and proposes that immigration detainees should get “automatic legal advice within 48 hours”:

Shockingly, this charity also received £10,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund, which I will be writing about next week. A preview below:

BID’s other funders constantly come up when I am looking into other asylum and migration/ left-wing charities. These are:

• AB Charitable Trust

• City Bridge Foundation

• John Ellerman Foundation

• Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust

• Paul Hamlyn Foundation

• The Tudor Trust

• Trust for London

You can read a bit more about some of these here:

“Do you know an Ed Sheeran?” reads the subject line of a newsletter sent out yesterday by “Hannah” at Refugee Action:

Refugee Action is a charity I’ve been banging on about a fair bit - including on GB News on Sunday evening.

It received £16,765,000 from taxpayers between 2021-25…

… and is very radical, recently lobbying Andy Burnham to scrap the Immigration and Asylum Bill:

In its latest email it wrote:

Dear Charlotte,

Ed Sheeran has been making headlines these last few weeks. In case you’re not following the story, he’s been widely criticised for the decision to remove his support act Macklemore from his American tour, after Macklemore said ‘free Palestine’ at one of their shows.

Ed Sheeran’s response was criticised by many as ‘sitting on the fence’.

It got me thinking about the people in my life who take a back seat when it comes to difficult conversations.

They might feel like they don’t know enough about a situation to speak up about it, or they might be worried that by doing so, they’ll be rocking the boat or upsetting someone.

These conversations can be hard to navigate, but as one of our incredible supporters, you know just how big of an impact they can have.

Being apolitical is a luxury for people whose lives do not depend on those with power taking action.

That’s why we’ve been working on tools to help you speak out about refugee rights.

We’ve got tools to answer questions like ‘why can’t refugees stay in the first safe country they reach?’ or ‘why are there so many refugees in the UK?’.

If you want to feel more informed, more up to date and more able to have those tricky conversations, you can read our resources here:

And if you have a friend like Ed who might need some persuading, you could share this email with them, or maybe share this explainer sheet on your social media:

We might not have a platform as big as Ed Sheeran’s, but we all have a voice, and we know when we speak up together incredible things are possible.

Please help us spread the message.

With thanks,

Hannah - Campaigns Team

Refugee Action

The gist is that, if you know someone who isn’t standing up for Palestinians/ refugee rights, you can use the charity’s tools to educate them, including its ridiculous activist pack, which I’ve written about here:

Unfortunately for the charity, many people aren’t apolitical and simply want to defund it and many others of its kind.

What are the sources of Refugee Action’s income?

Refugee Action: Income from charitable activities (grants from public authorities) Year ended 31 March 2025, with 2024 comparison

Note: This section is assisted by Claude AI