But here is the point, and it is the point Kruger’s £200 million should open rather than close. It is not just the unions. The unions are the visible tithe. The larger sum flows outward, to the charities, the NGOs and the grant-fed campaign groups that the state funds to lobby the state, and on this the indispensable work has been done by Charlotte Gill (go subscribe), who has spent years doing alone, unpaid and frequently abused what an entire national press corps could not be bothered to do. Her Woke Waste files are a public service. By her count the government handed £1.73 billion in grants to the charities she has analysed over five years, and £222 million of it went to twenty organisations working on asylum and migration, with £153 million to Migrant Help alone. These are not food banks. Many of them campaign, litigate and brief against the elected government’s stated policy, and then invoice it. The Home Office funds the bodies that sue the Home Office. The taxpayer pays for both sets of lawyers and is then told the resulting paralysis proves the system needs more money.
Put Gill’s ledger beside Kruger’s and the shape of the throne becomes visible. A permanent, salaried, pensioned class of activists, some inside the departments with union lanyards, some outside with charity numbers, all funded by the people whose votes they exist to frustrate. £200 million is the entry in the accounts. The true cost is every policy smothered, every removal blocked, every reform “reviewed” into dust.
The Tories knew all of it. Fourteen years, and the grants rolled out and the facility time rolled on, because the truth is they preferred a subsidised opposition to a fight. Kruger sat among them and watched, steam gently raising from his ears, which is precisely why his defection mattered and why his papers read like a man emptying his notebooks at last.
Taxpayer financed “charities” are a contradiction – a charity is, by definition, funded by voluntary donations – not by the threat of violence, taxation.
Charities are also, traditionally – although not by definition, managed by volunteers – not paid people.
These political “charitable groups” or “Non Government Organizations” are controlled by paid political activists – and get their money from the taxpayers (i.e. the money comes from the threat of violence – taxation).
It is all obscene – and it is no wonder they are are controlled by leftists.
And it is no just Britain – it is many Western countries.
For example, the United States is supposed to have to have a separation of church and state – yet many millions of Dollars were given to supposedly religious organizations (mainly Catholic, or rather “Catholic” as the groups are often controlled by leftist atheists who redefine God as “the people” or “the poor”) which, no surprise, campaign for open borders.
“Catholic” Democrats in the United States openly celebrate abortion up to birth (see the gloating public ceremony of the Governor of Massachusetts and a group of ladies committed to celebrating this) – indeed after birth (babies left to die), and, in a recent court case in Massachusetts, the strangling to death one-by-one of three children who were several years old – the supporters of this action were out in force in demonstrations in support of the murderer (who was the mother of the three children she strangled to death one-by-one – after tricking her husband into leaving the house, it was a premeditated murder, indeed three murders. which took quite some time).
Yet none of these supporters of child killing is excommunicated, and nor are people who deny the existence of the Devil as a being (a central Christian doctrine) – both the Devil and God are now “personifications” rather than persons – metaphors for (in the case of the Devil) the evil selfishness of capitalist society, and (in the case of God) “the people” or “the poor”. And this is very much in the “mainline” “Protestant” churches as well.
How far back does this all go? Is the decision to no longer face the altar (God centered worship), but, rather, to face the congregation (worship now being about “the people” – worshiping “the people” rather than God) important? Or is that reading too much into the change? Why was Saul “Rules for Radicals” (a book with an open dedication to Satan at the start) Alinsky (a central figure of the far left in the United States – indeed a thinly disguised Marxist atheist) taken as a guide by powerful people in the churches (especially the Catholic Church – but not exclusively the Catholic Church) as far back as the 1960s? By all logical reason Mr Alinsky (and his “Community Organizers”) should have been enemy-number-one of churches in the United States – but because he talked about “the people” and “the poor” they embraced him – even though the policies he advocated could only massively INCREASE poverty.
And, turning back to modern times, it turns out that most (yes – most) of the money spent by the “Catholic” Bishops in the United States in recent years came, in one way or another, from the Federal government.
Bishop Strickland of Tyler Texas (by the way no friend of Jews – but then, sadly, there is no reason why he should be, that was not his job) used to ask, and he asked politely, the Catholic Bishops conference why they were not arguing for Catholic doctrines – against feminism, homosexual acts, abortion (and-so-on) – they looked at him (at meetings and so on) as if he was a freak – how had a Catholic ended up as a Catholic Bishop? He was removed by Vatican – and the official who advised Pope Francis to remove him was Cardinal Robert Prevost (from the Chicago machine – although also long active in Latin America, promoting Liberation Theology) – now Leo XIV, a Gentleman whose far left political campaigning dates back to at least 1983 (the Communist Party demonstrations in Italy against American, but not against Soviet, nuclear weapons).
I suppose as it could be plausibly argued that as this tax-money did NOT go to a religious organization (Marxist “Critical Theory” being cult like – but NOT a religion in the traditional sense) the First Amendment (against the establishment of religion) is NOT being violated by giving money to this organization – or to the “Protestant” churches that have fallen under the control of much the same “Critical Theory” forces.
However, it is unclear why the taxpayers should be forced to fund endless far left propaganda (agitprop) and indoctrination – either from “church” groups (and it is most certainly NOT just Catholic ones) or from the (Marxist dominated) universities and general “education system”.
The same is true about the United Kingdom.
But, before anyone makes the point, I am aware of my bad-habit of attributing to conspiracy what can be better explained by ignorance and stupidity.
For example, the international declaration on human rights includes no real defense of freedom of speech or the right to keep and bear arms (indeed no real defense of traditional liberties generally – as the Covid lockdowns reminded us, as they were held NOT to violate it) – but it does include such things as “the right to holidays with pay”.
This seems to have come (or at least to have been strongly supported by) Jacques Maritain – later an adviser to Pope Paul VI and a person who strongly promoted Mr Saul Alinsky to Catholic religious officials (including the Pope).
It is quite possible that someone as utterly ignorant as the late Jacques Maritain, had no idea of the (thinly veiled) Marxism of Saul Alinksy – someone who can (in all seriousness) write (or support) “holidays with pay” as a universal-natural-right – is not a Marxist, they are an imbecile.
I am reminded of the first paragraph of a once famous encyclical of 1891 (yes as far back as that) written under the influence of Cardinal Manning under Pope Leo XIII – which claims that capitalism has produced terrible poverty (in 1891 living standards had massively improved in relation to the past – yet the first paragraph of the encyclical claims the exact opposite) and “moral depravity” (as if people in 1891 were more morally depraved in their conduct than they had been in 1791 or 1491 – if anything the opposite is true, moral conduct in 1891 was generally far better than it had been in the past), and celebrates “working class solidarity” (meaning government backed union Collective Bargaining, via such para military tactics as picket lines – legalized in Britain under the Disraeli Act of 1875, i.e. the machine for creating Institutional Unemployment) – neither Cardinal Manning or Pope Leo XIII were Marxists (on the contrary – they condemned socialism in the strongest possible terms), they were just writing things, making claims about the world around them, that were not true – indeed were the opposite of reality.
In the Protestant churches Collectivist thinking was called the “Social Gospel” – the doctrine that religion was about increasing government spending and regulations (and supporting activist groups such as unions – including their obstruction of the entrances of places of business) rather than being about God (as a being – rather than a personification or metaphor) and individual survival after death.
The “Fundamentalist” movement in the United States was NOT originally about opposing the theory of evolution (although it got taken over by such opponents in the 1920s) – in the early 1900s the writers of the essays on the “fundamentals” of Christianity were not attacking biological evolution (indeed several of them were scientists – and they supported the theory, James McCosh in the 19th century had showed that it is no way necessary for a Christian to oppose this scientific theory) – they were writing against the “Social Gospel” – i.e. the effort to replace Christian doctrines with worship of ever bigger government (and worship of activist groups).
They did not seek government (taxpayer) funding – because individual life after death, the survival of the individual soul – by the grace of God, has no need of higher government spending or more regulations. And some (some) of them understood that more government spending and regulations leads to more (more – not less) poverty than would otherwise by the case.
They rejected what is now called “Collective Salvation” and rejected the idea that heaven is a metaphor for a new society on Earth by Collectivist political activity. And, of course, they rejected the idea that God is a personification of, or a metaphor for, “the people” or “the poor”.
Here’s an interesting post by Brian Micklethwait from back in 2014 describing the same phenomenon: “Christopher Snowdon on fake charities and sock puppets”.
Quote:
I remember reading in Audubon Magazine in the 1990’s about the ‘sue and settle’ racket enviro groups and their favored legal teams engaged in.
Federal agencies would ‘invite’ suits against various agencies active in land/forest/wildlife management in the west particularly when
agency employees had agendas that contradicted the agency stated aims. Suits would be filed, the agency would defend perfunctorily and
then give in, and the court would order legal fees to be paid by the agency. Win-win all around with no consequences to employees.
USAID spent 70% of its distributions within the US with only part of the remainder actually getting to recipients in Africa.