Islington and Camden Council's woke splurge on "Rainbow" kayaking

Austerity is so awful that taxpayers are spending £250,000 + a charity organising socials

Like most people, the sight of a utility bill through the door fills me with dread.

Council tax is one I’m none too keen on. I pay around £107 per month in Islington - and that’s with a “single person discount”. It’s quite a lot on top of everything else.

Recently Islington raised my council tax; only by a small amount (5.85%), but even the slightest change reminds you of how much you are already paying. The top of the letter reads: “For a more equal future”.

Yesterday I stumbled upon one of the things included in this “equal future”.

Islington and Camden Council have generously given locals’ money to the charity forum+:

£63,107 doesn’t seem like a huge amount of money compared to other government spending (although, we are in a period of “austerity” apparently).

But over the years forum+ has had hundreds of thousands in funding from government grants:

From 2019, that’s £627,710 in government grants.

Here’s a breakdown of how much Camden and Islington spent on forum+ in 2023 and 2022:

The total for both years is £252,015.

forum⁺ is one of many charities on the Charity Commission whose mission is to fight hate crime (even though we are told hate crime is constantly getting worse).

It specifically deals with LGBT+ victims of hate crime. As with many charitable organisations, a socially-conscious mission is a great protection from scrutiny; if you question the funding you run the risk of being deemed a homophobe/ transphobe/ otherwise bigoted.

I have three main problems with the funding.

Paying for socials
First is that when I looked online at forum⁺’s activities, it often looked like a lot of people having a jolly. Its mission even says that it “hosts social groups and events which celebrate local LGBT+ life”.

These have included an art workshop to celebrate “queer joy and creativity”

A film club:

Cooking lessons:

And LGBTQ+ “Rainbow Paddlers” Kayaking sessions

These are “hobbies” - not charitable activities - that people should pay for with their own money and organise in their own time.

In a period of terrible “Tory cuts”, how come taxpayers are being billed for LGBTQ+ kayaking socials?

Interestingly, when I mentioned “Rainbow Paddlers” on X people thought I was talking about the council paying for children to go kayaking. Nope; this is adults!

Ideologically contentious

The other problem is that the charity promotes the same gender ideology that is seeing people’s liberties threatened in Scotland under Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act.

For example, in its April newsletter forum⁺ talks about “non-binary content”. It shouldn’t need spelling out, but many people aren’t on board with this terminology - “queer” can be very offensive to gay people who are used to it being a derogatory word - and it plays into wider concerns that sex is being erased, seeing as “queer female [which could mean biological males] and non-binary” are now part of Lesbian Visibility Week.

The “T” in LGBTQ+ in emphasised in most of forum^+’s posts - including one about Lesbian Visibility Day - at a time when lesbians have condemned pressure for them to date trans women (biological males). (Here’s Kathleen Stock’s excellent article on this phenomenon for UnHerd last year).

Last problem?

“Hate” is becoming politicised.

To explain what I mean, take this example. Two weeks ago I attended the CAN-SG conference on sex and gender. It proved very “controversial” because its attendees - shock, horror! - mostly believe that sex is immutable.

It was the first time in my life that - weeks ahead of going to the event - I had thought through the risk of violence/ insults/ having stuff thrown at me from activists outside.

The event was, indeed, targeted by trans activists who tried to storm in. Three were arrested.

You can read the coverage here:

To my mind, it’s very clear that there is huge hate towards women who state that biological sex is real - just look at the vitriol JK Rowling faces.

Yet none of this counts under “hate crime”, and in fact, Scotland’s new laws make hate against us legal - by claiming that we are “stirring up hatred” through things like asking whether lesbians want to date someone with a penis.

Frankly, I don’t want to contribute to any “charity” that promotes this nonsense, and I suspect most residents of Islington simply don’t want to pay for others to have a cinema club, or go paddling, point blank.

Especially from a council that comes out with this: