Today I’m back with EVEN more terrible Comic Relief grants. Yesterday’s piece is below.
This post is free to read. Support my independent journalism by taking out a subscription or making a donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Thank you to everyone who has funded my work.
£318,000 to Race Council Cymru (Global Majority Fund)
Race Council Cymru says it’s “Building an anti-racist Wales through community action, education, and systemic change since 2010.” Its initiatives include “the Race Charter Mark in Wales, an annual benchmarking exercise that will rank and publicise the best employers for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people in Wales” and Hate Crime Projects:
One report on its website, titled Deconstructing Racist Narratives and Discrimination in the United Kingdom, suggests the Government “could instil an attitude change with regards to the racist discriminatory attitudes found evident in the public… through increasing the punishments for committed hate crimes”…
… and that “Governments of devolved nations should instil a more inclusive curriculum” to help with “deconstructing racial narratives from a young age”:
£1,500,000 to Justice Together
“We are deeply concerned about the government’s announcement of planned reforms to the asylum system”, reads a statement on the website of Justice Together, a “funder collaboration” that supports “grant partners to build the power and influence of people with lived and learned experience of the immigration system and embed anti-racism strategies.” The “collaboration grew out of conversations led by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation”, a charity that explicitly believes in open borders.
Justice Together is committed to “Racial Justice”, and has its own “Anti-Racist Advisory Group” and “racial justice programme” to “support the sustainability of organisations that are led by the global majority” and/ or “led by the global majority and carrying out racial justice work.”
£670,000 to METRO Charity (LGBTQ+ Intermediary partner)
“Talk all things wellbeing and intersectionality” reads the Instagram post of METRO Charity, in an advert for its “free mental health support group for LGBTQ+ Black POC and mixed-race (global majority) people in Lewisham.” Another post reads “Trans kids deserve to grow up!” and explains how METRO Charity’s “LGBTQ+ youth group” marked Trans Day of Remembrance and Trans Awareness Week by making “origami trans+flags” and "trans+ icons top trump cards”.
Anyone on the Right will be familiar with the ghastly Sunder Katwala, the director of the equally-ghastly charity British Future. Katwala is famous for compiling threads to show why right-wingers are wrong (I’m included in one on “dangerous misinfo”) and is highly vigilant if you say anything negative about British Future (which received £750,650 from taxpayers between 2021-2024).
British Future claims “We help immigration and refugee advocates to unlock public support, identifying messages and arguments that reach and persuade the ‘Anxious Middle’ – the majority of the British public who are neither wholly pro- nor anti-immigration.” Comic Relief awarded British Future £400,000 in September 2024 to help “bring about a more positive and informed policy agenda and debate on immigration, which takes account of public preferences and migrants’ interests.”
Funders of British Future, past and present, include the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which (to reiterate) explicitly believes in open borders; the Open Society Foundations; and the Aziz Foundation (which funded the Ramadan lights in central London and is one part of the newly-formed, taxpayer-funded British Muslim Trust).
£200,000 to Action Foundation UK (Empowering refugees to overcome exclusion)
Action Foundation “is an award-winning charity based in Newcastle upon Tyne providing support to disadvantaged refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants across the North East.”
It helps “vulnerable migrants” to “access legal support”, “avoid homelessness” and “access vital services” among other things.
On social media it posts about International Migrants Day and encourages people to lobby the government over asylum rights.
In addition to its Comic Relief funding, it received £1,130,580 from taxpayers (between 2021-25).
To add, my problem with these refugee/ asylum charities isn’t that they exist per se. It’s that their cumulative effect is open borders, and that there’s FAR TOO many of them (I’m talking thousands/ more).
Indeed, my running total for 22 taxpayer-funded asylum and migration charities (bearing in mind there are over 170k charities listed on the Charity Commission for England and Wales) across the last five tax years is…
£240,711,130!!!
Paid subscribers can access full resources here:
This post is free to read. Support my independent journalism by taking out a subscription or making a donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Thank you to everyone who has funded my work.
To my shame, I never knew Comic Relief was used as a Trojan Horse it appears.
Have never given a penny to Red Nose Day - I recognised it for what it was from day one: a vehicle for overpaid and undertalented performers signalling their virtue in supporting this charity or that, and promoting the idea that giving without thinking would make the donors feel good. The fact that most of the money never did any good (all those administrators need to be paid) and the cause itself could be better supported by different policies in the home (usually African) country was never mentioned. Just dig into your pockets and feel good!