In this episode of Trigonometry, we're joined by Charlotte Gill, a brilliant researcher and writer, to discuss what she calls "woke waste" in higher education, and how the government is wasting millions of pounds of your hard earned money on it.
00:00:37.360I call it the biggest scandal you've never heard of.
00:00:41.520Charlotte Gill, welcome to Trigonometry.
00:00:43.520Thank you for having me. I'm a mega fan, so I'm very excited to be here.
00:00:46.480Well, we're big fans of yours because you're actually doing some very important work.
00:00:49.840You're doing a lot of research into how taxpayer money is being spent on some very interesting projects.
00:00:55.680Yeah, so for the best part of the year now, I've been running my sub stack on what I call woke waste.
00:01:04.800I call it how the taxpayer is funding their own demise.
00:01:08.400Essentially tracking huge numbers of projects that most people have no idea are on the go that are woke and extremely expensive altogether.
00:01:18.960So the first bit of evidence I stumbled upon to realise how bad this was, was when I was looking into, I'd actually been tipped off about a study in higher education about non-binary inclusivity.
00:01:35.280And I was looking into the academics that did that study, and one of them had worked on a project about pregnant men, exploring the pregnant man.
00:01:47.600And so obviously I Googled that, had a little search for what that was all about, and it took me to a website called the UKRI, which I'm sure we'll touch on later.
00:01:57.600And I saw a price tag attached to it, which was, altogether, it was just under ÂŁ700,000.
00:02:21.680Yeah, so this, this was a study that's in the past now, but it went on for several years.
00:02:28.880It was led by someone, Professor Sally Hines, who's quite infamous on Twitter for hounding gender critical women.
00:02:38.480And her own research is about gender identity, and she's had, I think it was into the millions of taxpayer money.
00:02:44.720Meanwhile, this is someone who is pretty rude to taxpayers, which gender critical feminists are, as much as any other people on Twitter.
00:02:53.520And quite politically active in general, but she's completely representative of the type of person that we're funding a lot of in higher education.
00:03:03.780Look, I'm going to get angry. This is just going to happen.
00:03:07.360And so let's just delve into it. Make me angry.
00:03:10.660What, what, what is, what are the most egregious slash bonkers nonsense that my hard, my hard-earned money is being used to pay?
00:04:54.340And part of his research, because I watched webinars of him explaining the research, there was, there were pictures of men meeting in a stable with hay around them.
00:05:03.900So, actual, I thought it was like, you know, you get otters and beavers and whatever, like, terminology for gay men, actual pigs.
00:06:15.800Um, but yeah, this was part of very important research that cost 170, 80,000 pounds.
00:06:22.220So this man's had a lot of taxpayers money.
00:06:25.660And I think the thing is, um, yeah, also he's, he's Portuguese.
00:06:29.640And I, I mentioned that cause he lives in Sweden and I don't think, especially when there are a lot of debates about international students.
00:06:35.860I don't think Brits are going to be particularly happy to know that this individual is now in, in, uh, Sweden voted recently at the elections there.
00:06:43.220That I saw on his Twitter and it's part of an 840,000 grant to study gay porn.
00:07:05.320It's all part of the diversity obsession at universities and pretty much every publicly funded sector.
00:07:13.220Also, it does just seem that you can get a grant for anything, um, if you just embed social justice terms into your proposal, that most of them are complete nonsense.
00:07:26.140There's a study about decolonizing the city of York, for instance.
00:07:30.320There, there are hundreds of studies about decolonizing things and all they're doing, they just think of anything and they just embed those words into the abstract.
00:07:40.800I, I'll be like, I'm going on the trigonometry podcast to scrutinize two cis, hetero, white males.
00:07:50.600Um, I'm going to see if I can unpick their gendered privilege through my eco-poetry, um, through a Foucauldian analysis, uh, involving decolonizing Westminster Abbey, where we're near.
00:08:40.820Yeah, and the, what they do to try and make it sound relevant, that there are two things, because obviously you just think that's ridiculous.
00:08:48.520We need, we need medical doctors, but we don't need bed wetting experts from that era.
00:08:52.980But what they do to try and make it sound relevant is they say, oh, I'm working with these current charities, um, that they're working with a few in that project to make it sound like they're going to help patients now.
00:09:04.840And that's why the research is needed.
00:09:07.460Um, yeah, so, but ultimately it's just, when, when we're hearing about austerity all the time in the news, why do we need that?
00:09:15.540Look, it's a good, look, it's a very good point because actually what you talk about very articulately is the corruption of the charity sector.
00:09:28.580Let's talk about the Tepuna Project, intergenerational healing, settler accountability, and decolonizing participatory action research in Aoteroa, uh, 310 grand, mate.
00:09:41.440Or alternatively, let's talk about, uh, 1,180,000 pounds on the cultural legacies of the British Empire, reasonable, um, classical music's colonial history.
00:09:55.540There's quite a lot of studies that involve travel to get to the bottom of what's going on in these places.
00:10:03.860One of the most, often you do find, and this is why I bring up international students, there is, I found a bit of a correlation with, um, international students that come to study in the UK, but somehow are posted at their home countries to conduct the study.
00:10:19.340So, so one example I found is a Bolivian PhD researcher, so she's going to get a doctorate, who's gone back to Bolivia to decolonize museums in Bolivia, and we're paying for that.
00:10:34.140The British taxpayer is paying for this woman to decolonize museums in Bolivia.
00:11:05.820So this has just become one giant scam, basically.
00:11:09.200Yeah, I mean, I don't want to lie, but I'm, I'm always worried that I'm going to get sued, you know, because I'm coming, I am making a lot of enemies, but I call it the biggest scandal you've never heard of.
00:11:21.160Because, what, what, what does that mean?
00:12:21.140It's, the terminology is very vague, but it will be, the gist of it is, yes, it's a bit white.
00:12:28.040So, we're going to bring in our special healing, you know, like sort of like an exorcism to remove the white spirits from, from the city of York or folk music or whatever else contraception that they're decolonizing.
00:12:41.440Because what's interesting about this is, if that, if your criteria for getting approved for research is hitting all these particular things that you talk about, race, gender, diversity, then obviously that's what you're going to get.
00:12:58.220So, whilst I think it's awful, incentives work.
00:13:04.020If you incentivize a particular type of behavior, that's what you're going to get.
00:13:08.160And so, it's a system that's incentivizing this, isn't it?
00:13:12.300Yeah, you could say there is an argument for that, but the system is run by people in the system.
00:13:19.760It's academics, you know, other academics, it's all just very cyclical.
00:13:25.340And, but I do take your point, one example of what you're saying is the Arts Council England.
00:13:31.280I don't know, have you heard, you've heard of Arts Council England?
00:13:50.240And Arts Council England does incentivize woke.
00:13:53.580It has, it has four investment principles.
00:13:58.760Essentially, if you apply for funding with Arts Council England, you've got to embed these investment principles into your funding pitch.
00:14:06.440Two of those are about the actual work, is it any good?
00:14:10.240The other two are environmental responsibility and diversity.
00:14:15.920And the site has huge numbers of documents to help you embed these investment principles into your funding.
00:14:24.080And it even has a note, like, we'll be looking to make sure that you embed these investment principles, winkie wink.
00:14:30.000And, and one, one example that I saw that I think was someone trying to do this was a non-binary dancer who was converting their dance moves into renewable energy.
00:14:43.920And when I first saw it, I thought, I thought, no, like, what are you doing?
00:14:48.280But then I thought, that's not a thing.
00:15:40.300People are allowed to have these opinions.
00:15:42.040But to me, this just seems like an obvious waste of people's money.
00:15:45.720And to be serious about it, you know, if I'm a pensioner living in poverty somewhere and I'm hearing that we're spending, you know, 50 grand here, some guy's getting paid 200 grand to watch gay porn all day.
00:16:22.440There was even someone that got taxpayer funding who called himself a green being.
00:16:31.240Like, they're actually painted green as if it's a gender identity.
00:16:34.280And they were called oozing gloop, by the way.
00:16:39.740But the more I write about it, and I always read the comments when I write for The Telegraph about it, and at first people are like, ha ha, what a joke.
00:16:49.220You know, the rage is growing and fair enough because it is a massive, it's, yeah, it's really bad what's going on.
00:16:58.000It's an insult to taxpayers, especially when you see people that need funding for illness, cancer care in this country isn't great.
00:17:05.640There are lots of rare diseases, motor neuron disease, for instance, pensioners having their fuel allowance.
00:17:12.200We know there are lots of things lacking in the UK that could do with investment.
00:17:16.820And we have a political class talking to us about austerity, and there was none, at least not how they make it sound.
00:17:25.160Do you think also the problem is, is this is what happens, let's use Arts Council England, this is just what happens with state-sponsored art.
00:17:33.900You get this nonsense because you're insulated from the reality of having to sell tickets and make a profit, which you have to do on the West End.
00:17:42.800I think there's an element of it attracting a certain kind of person who wants, who, I don't want to say this about everyone in the public sector.
00:17:52.480There are lots of publicly funded people whose work I really appreciate, dustbin men, you know, policemen, nurses, things like that.
00:18:01.540There are a lot of people that there's an entitlement to it.
00:18:07.740And a certain type of person is attracted into that public sector for that reason.
00:18:12.780It is very much to do with a bloated state.
00:18:18.820Some of the people run, Arts Council England, for instance, is run by a positive psychologist who is a bit too positive, in my opinion, about arts.
00:18:29.540And retweets all sorts of stuff that other people would find woke and contentious.
00:18:35.300So it does attract that sort of person.
00:18:37.760But also as well, I mean, I think that, look, if you're putting on a West End musical, you've got to make sure that you can pay the venue.
00:18:45.780You've got to make sure you pay directors, the dancers, the actors, all of this stuff.
00:18:50.220You best make sure you get bums on seats.
00:19:01.960I should have answered that on the phone.
00:19:03.160But this is a really good point because the one number you never hear about is ticket sales and how much money they make.
00:19:10.160They only want to talk about money when they want more of it.
00:19:14.380For instance, The Guardian has some ridiculous articles about, it's got its own austerity section.
00:19:21.320And there's a few talk of cash-strapped entities and one is the South Bank Centre, which receives near like 20 million sort of around that rate.
00:22:25.520And the worst thing about it, this person had a moustache on the stage, sort of looking for Mr. Not so much Mr. Right, but Mr. Plastic Cup.
00:22:35.720And the worst thing, as in the, the worst thing is I went on their Instagram a while later, and they're not even pregnant.
00:22:47.460You know, not only did we spend a lot of money, well, the National Lottery spent a lot of money on this woke thing.
00:22:52.580Not even, didn't even get the result from there.
00:22:54.480How dare you be so insensitive to their infertility.
00:22:57.880Charlotte, have you tried to reach out to any of these organisations and ask them any questions about why they're doing this, or question any particular projects?
00:23:08.520I did try, there were some, I mean, when I wrote an article, I do have to get in touch with them to tell them, to give them right of reply.
00:23:17.500And, and there are, there are typical trends in how people reply.
00:23:23.900A lot of professors don't really want to talk.
00:23:27.340Because you have to say what you're going to say in your article when you, you have to be quite explicit.
00:23:33.280And other than that, a few of them wanted to have a go at me, actually, about the charity.
00:23:41.080But other than that, yeah, I didn't, I just view it as a sort of hostile environment, because for them to be saying those things anyway, we're never going to have a constructive conversation.
00:23:51.820In general, I always say, you know, people get told off about sticking in their echo chambers, and we're meant to get out of them and talk to people we disagree with.
00:24:01.440Whereas I think, actually, I like my echo chamber.
00:24:05.000I don't want to talk to, other than the legal requirements, I don't want to sit and have a conversation and try and understand someone that thinks non-minor is a thing, or that women can have a penis, you know, any more than someone who's, who thinks the earth is flat.
00:24:21.160But what we're also talking about here, and this is the other element of it that I find very, very troubling, is that, so you've got this ideology, which is completely dominant.
00:24:32.400And what it is doing, it's strangling free speech in the arts.
00:24:37.600So if you want a type of performance or a play which is going to be heterodox, which is antithetical to this ideology, that simply isn't going to be produced, is it?
00:24:48.320No, everything comes down to identity.
00:24:52.000It's, everything's view, the product is, what's that identity first?
00:24:57.900And then we'll look at the product, whereas you want to, you know, the way you want it around is that the identity is incidental to the product, and good art shouldn't be limited to a certain identity, it should naturally come through.
00:25:13.320And I think the arts, okay, there is, the class is the biggest barrier in the arts, but music especially has always been fairly diverse.
00:25:21.560But, yeah, there's, there's one theatre called Soho Theatre.
00:26:24.180It's just doing exactly what the far right do.
00:26:26.360The other way is the progressive version of that, because we're all being reduced to our parts.
00:26:31.700And if they intersect, oh, well, that's brilliant, especially, you know, if you're a global majority and you're transgender, oh, brilliant.
00:26:39.040Like, we really want those kind of people.
00:26:41.220Oh, white and straight, and cis-hetero, oh, God, oh, no thanks.
00:26:47.100So, in other words, this ideology has really permeated this sector, as we know.
00:26:52.020I mean, we knew that that's one of the reasons we started the show when we were in the comedy industry.
00:26:56.480This was already happening back seven years ago, whenever we started.
00:26:59.980But it just sounds like this is the dominant worldview now.
00:27:05.220And that's fine, except I don't understand why the British taxpayers are paying for it.
00:28:30.600Especially because it all happened under a conservative government.
00:28:34.040That's the punchline, really, isn't it?
00:28:36.660Because, and this is something you've spoken about.
00:28:40.980And I find it actually quite powerful that, on the one hand, you have the conservative government going, you know, we don't agree with this.
00:29:09.120But then I looked at funding for, say, hate crime charities and ones that endorse all that terminology, all the gender identity, and that got government grants.
00:29:21.720In fact, this hate crime charity, I found, was funded by my own council and Camden Council.
00:29:30.040So they, they were getting hundreds of thousands over the years.
00:29:33.380And, and in addition to perpetuating all this terminology that the central government were trying to oppose, they were also funding rainbow paddling sessions at, it's called like Camden Pirates.
00:30:33.480Birmingham council have gone bankrupt.
00:30:35.600I know they, they hired food justice consultants and they, they had, they had this food justice online event.
00:30:45.380Some of these online events are hilarious as well.
00:30:47.420Well, it's, it's like four views and you'll see the council, they'll be like, I'm so excited to be here today.
00:30:55.620So, you know, and the guy, one of the guys leading it, I just found him saying, he introduced his talk about food justice by saying something like, food, it's really important.
00:31:10.540You know, like, why are we, why are we paying for this?
00:31:12.940But you'll just find huge numbers of examples of councils that, yeah, the, yeah, the LGBT rainbow paddlers, and they also had like queer creative art sessions.
00:31:27.060They were getting, it was something, hundreds of thousands each from Camden and Islington while they were saying, they actually, my council actually said it was prioritizing frontline services.
00:31:37.060And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, because they are going, they're going kayaking.
00:31:53.480We've got kids who have got special needs and not getting the support that they require.
00:31:58.320And you go, these are things, and we've also got, especially post-COVID, there's so many kids now who are struggling with mental health issues.
00:32:10.540All of that, you go, this is where we require funding.
00:34:40.540Whenever I, no one ever says yes when I ask them, have you heard of this, that we're funding with all these projects.
00:34:46.720So, Universities UK gets about, it's had about 17 million in taxpayer funding over the years.
00:34:56.680And it basically lobbies for universities.
00:34:59.600It's the, all of its content is saying they're really great.
00:35:04.200We need to spend more on them, like more than we are currently on, which is just under 9 billion a year from, from one quango.
00:35:11.200And so, yeah, so they're just putting out lots of let's fund universities and we're paying for them to be around, whereas some taxpayers don't want to pay more for universities, which they are.
00:35:26.680Like, we're paying for a lobby group for universities because it's deemed a charity.
00:35:32.060There's just so many instances of this.
00:35:34.240We should be able to vote on their proposal, not have to fund them making the proposals.
00:35:39.920So, the good news is we've got Labour in power and they're going to do something about this, right?
00:35:49.400I really don't know what's going to happen.
00:35:52.260I mean, I do kind of know what's going to happen with Labour, but I think, I always joke that we're going to have another peasants revolt because the conditions are there.
00:36:04.240But I think a lot of people, there's real growing awareness, even woke waste, the views are growing by tens of thousands per month now.
00:36:17.380A lot of it's getting out in the papers.
00:36:18.900And especially with the registered interest that came out about the Labour Party, people are becoming aware of just how bad problems with funding are.
00:36:32.660If you look through, I don't know if you've looked through the MP's register of interest.
00:36:38.300So, it's about, I don't know if I need to explain to listeners what it is.
00:39:22.640Things that might not necessarily be good for Brits, as a lot of people have said, but might be good for other people that have shares because they've put them in renewables.
00:39:32.020I mean, one example to go into the whole eco thing is, do you know what the Climate Change Committee is?
00:39:45.680This is part of the reason, by the way, that we have all these funding holes because to pan back a bit, Tony Blair splintered democracy a lot.
00:40:03.460His whole approach was splintering everything so that government, even though we have a central government, its powers are so much more weakened.
00:40:13.580So the Climate Change Committee was one of these Blairite institutions.
00:40:17.500And it's meant to help us reach net zero.
00:40:20.140So it's the task force, rather like the Migration Advisory Committee and the OBR, Office of Budget Responsibility.
00:40:28.980It's a task force designed to help us meet net zero targets.
00:42:04.980I, I don't think, I don't think that's cool at all.
00:42:07.920I don't see why he should, I think that is a really big registered interest issue.
00:42:13.040And, sorry, because I've gone on a real round circle, but Labour are going to be awful because they have a lot of green funders.
00:42:21.620And things that you can't even really find, I find in the document, I can't, there's one company I couldn't find, but I could find in a, without going on a whole spill.
00:42:32.120But it just means the electorate, it's not like they see something in front of them and they're like, yeah, we're voting for that.
00:42:39.240They, they would have to go through 780 pages, look through all that, do what I'm doing basically, go to the UKRI, go to the Charity Commission, go to Arts Council England and work out what they're voting for and paying for at the same time.
00:42:53.820Sorry, that was a bit, that was a bit happy.
00:42:57.500So, I mean, again, I use that word corruption, but it sort of is, isn't it really?
00:43:04.840Because it's these politicians who are being financially incentivised to then carry out the wishes of the people funding them.
00:43:14.140Well, you know, one has to be careful using the word corruption.
00:43:19.540I actually come from a family of lawyers, so, so I always avoid using that word.
00:43:26.120Well, all of this is legal, right? They're not breaking the law, any of them.