Britons struggling through the ongoing cost-of-living crisis might struggle to understand why more than £750,000 (€880,000) of taxpayers’ money has been handed to an academic research paper on “Comics and Race in Latin America.” But this is simply the tip of the iceberg.
A story is beginning to unfold in the British media about how “tens of millions of pounds” is being given to what GB News’ Patrick Christys described as “pointless woke academic research.” One project on “the Europe that gay porn built” has received particular criticism, although only after it was awarded £841,830 (€981,000)—again, from the taxpayers’ purse.
Funding has been handed down from the non-departmental UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) body of the UK government. Conservative Party ministers allow this to invest £8 billion (€9.33bn) of taxpayers’ money each year.
Journalist Charlotte Gill, who has spent recent weeks researching this area, found that the following research titles had received particularly vast sums of cash:
- Decolonizing South East Asian Sound Archives (£123,470/€144,000)
- Screen Encounters with Britain: What do young Europeans make of Britain and its digital screen culture? (£452,623/€527,900)
- Queer Music, Queer Theory, Queer Music Theory (£177,422/€206,870)
- Trans Performance Now: Glitching cisgenderism (£185,627/€216,400)
Meanwhile, supposed Conservatives are arguing for the old and infirm to be killed in order to save the state some money.
Gill’s full list can be found here. Sharing the titles soon prompted many on the online left to hound her for “stirring up more culture war nonsense.” Richard Bentall, a Psychology Professor at the University of Sheffield, even appeared to compare her work to that of the Nazis and Stalinists, who “tried to dictate what sort of science was acceptable.”
Responding to backlash, Gill wrote:
Think about what I’m doing. I am copying and pasting studies that the taxpayer has funded—with a little commentary. Then look at the vitriol. It’s not normal.
Twitter academics say these studies are *actually* brilliant. But are also apoplectic that they’ve been shared.
Dr. Joanna Williams, who wrote a book titled How Woke Won, recently told The Daily Telegraph that the “UKRI should be using taxpayers’ money to fund academic research, not political activism.” The body itself responded to criticism, insisting that “funding decisions [were] made via rigorous peer review by relevant independent experts across academia and business,” which raises further questions regarding the political makeup of peer review groups.
