Stonewall loss of jobs and funding after US aid cuts

[Cismyfatarse]

Who knew they were funded via the US government? Not me.

Trump aid freeze ‘may force Stonewall to cut up to half of staff’

www.thetimes.com/article/62cb4fe0-1d91-43f5-a364-bc539eb3234f?shareToken=28cd28f7a1e212f58fca18b4f8ff68b7

Just look at the thread about US aid being cut - there are people very upset that all kinds of projects, including in Europe, are no longer being funded by American taxpayers.

It's sensible to support and help people in other countries to a point though, it's just that some have gone to far.
It's a real shame for all the ones that are actually doing good.

Its still about transparency. If governments want to fund initiatives, tax payers need to be aware and the money spent justified.

Are stonewall actually improving lgbt rights and acceptance across the world? How is that being measured.

And that is tax taken over and above what is paid at State level (ie to HMRC) similar to the UK paying into the (that thing the UK public voted to leave).

That's lovely theoretically, but it's really much more complicated than that.

There is the question of how the citizens in these countries feel about American money funding projects they may not believe in? Does that not matter? How does it affect their view of these causes> In the case of SW, for example, I wonder how much these projects feed into the idea of LBG issues as colonial interference and an expression of American political power, or western sexual permissiveness.

But there are also a lot of issues around where these funds go in country. There seem to be a lot of cases where they are going to governments that may in fact be corrupt, and as someone mentioned up thread, there are often other government interests tied to these projects, ie, intelligence gathering.

And then - there are all the regular Americans who see their own infrastructure and services all fucked up, and think that may be the Eastern Europeans should make their own way on sexuality issues and the US government should be spending American money on supporting American people.

Oh, yes. Plenty of these 'third sector' groups that are set up for funding and exist only to get funding and do nothing, other than get funding.

Exporting American concepts and paradigms around the world was a form of soft colonial power.

Yes. All those so keen on opposing colonialist tendencies really shouldn't want to accept US money. Goodness knows there's been lots of complaints about US interference over the years, now when they want to do the opposite apparently that's a problem too.

I'm afraid if the claim is this money is preventing LGB people having to flee as refugees then that needs hard evidence. If I was a US taxpayer I'd want hard evidence that money was better spent in Eastern Europe than on maternal care in the US given it's been estimated 80% of maternal deaths in the US are avoidable and money is the key issue there (remembering also black women die at 2.5 x the rate of other ethnicities and all women, especially poor women, in the US at much higher rates than women in Europe).

And what Trump is doing is implementing his democratic mandate when the lack of prior transparency about this money was anything but democratic. It wouldn't be making headlines if people had easy access to this information prior to Trump.

He seems to be confirming what many suspected.

It's a huge grift, really.

When I donate to charity I always look at the number of staff and average staff salary and CEO salary vs Frontline spending. Also marketing budget, if I can find the data. Some charities seem to mainly exist to employ people on large salaries rather than actually do anything positive.

They are single handedly responsible for the policies in most major companies and many of our NHS trusts in this country that say a variation of "Good practice is to support trans people to use facilities appropriate to their gender. As well as ensuring trans employees can use male and female toilets where these align with their gender"

I couldn't give a shiny shit if they implode.

How far do you take this strategy though? Lots of asylum claims are about political persecution or war - but we don't intervene to stop any local conflict that makes people leave their homelands and try to enter the UK.

I'm unconvinced that giving money to Stonewall is an effective way of making foreign countries better for LGB or T people.

There is a real life Accountancy cost to include DEI type data in publicly quoted companies and its a bigger relative cost as (unquoted) organisations get smaller.
Thats over an above charity payments and training and tick the box hiring.

That economic cost was being pushed by pureists who wanted companies to track and exclude suppliers who did not meet a fixed benchmark.

So the phone which is made by slave labour and materials from distructive mining are bad and become the responsibility of the western parent company. Or whole life costing of battries for cars which need a whole new power grid in the USA .......

For those who regret the probable demise of an organisation that became all about the t - can I point out that the LGB Alliance exists.

For Stonewall I have 🎻

Stonewall was going to be in trouble anyway, even if this project wasn't shelved.

Like many charities, Stonewall will ought to have been preparing for 1 April '25 triple whammy of increases in minimum/living wage (6.7%), increase in employers' NI (from 13.8% to 15%) and the threshold from which it is charged (dropping from £9,100 to £5,000).

[For someone earning £20,000 in 2025-26 their employer will pay. £2,250 in secondary Class 1 NICs. That is an increase of £746 (or nearly 50%). For an employee earning £40,000 in 2025-26 the employer will pay £5,250. This is an increase of £986 (or about 23%). With 114 staff employed last year their wages bill is more than likely increasing by at least £100k (and that is before any staff payrise - a 1% payrise would cost them about £1/2m)].

The £233k grant from the Global Equality fund is restricted (so Stonewall can only use the money to undertake the project, with perhaps a small % to cover central overheads). I don't think I have ever seen a grant that builds in redundancy costs for staff, so these will need to be met from unrestricted funds which dropped from £1,173,514 to £385,118 in the year to 31 March 2024.

Eek

USAID did many good things
it should not have been cut wholesale
but clearly chunks of its spending will not be missed

@illinivich exactly.

If a charity or NGO derives the majority of its income from Government is it really an NGO? Surely it’s just a government department that should be transparent and accountable (in the same way a gov department is). If providing funds to a ‘charity’ is just a way of hiding meddling it should not be allowed.

I always said Trans movement was top down not grass roots and the investigation into USAID has been enlightening.

Maybe the trans agenda will no longer be forced on young, impressionable children.

This type of funding is also a form of soft power that empires indulge in. It increases their cultural capital and spreads their influence around the world. But when a country is trying to re-focus on its own priorities again....or in Trump's case to Make America Great Again, it could well be seen as a wasteful indulgence.

I'm honestly surprised so many people seem to be anti democracy. Trump was very clear he was going to do something like this and he won a democratic mandate. I don't like it all either but I also don't like a lot of what Starmer's doing but I accept he was democratically elected and has the democratic mandate to a) be PM and b) cut winter fuel payments etc.

Trump has always failed to behave like the normal political class and that was part of his appeal to many. I think it's outrageously undemocratic that so many who identify as righteous think this money should just be gifted to them in perpetuity because they ID as good with no scrutiny nor consideration of the will of the US taxpayers funding it.

Is it possible that Stonewall could be liable for some of the consequences of providing incorrect advice to organisations?

Yes, it has all come of as a bit of a shock......even though Europeans have always hated the U.S and resented its cultural hegemony ( especially on the Left, ironically), yet at the same time have been dependent on it.

Trump is not obeying the US constitution.
Musk is breaking Federal law left right and centre but Congress are sticking their heads in the sand.

Trump was elected as were the Senate and Congress.
Musk was not.
Nor has he been confirmed by the Senate to lead DOGE - as required by Federal law.
Musk's goons are threatening Veterans and Soldiers to get illegal access to US Citizen data.

That is not how democracy works.

Yes, it has all come of as a bit of a shock......even though Europeans have always hated the U.S and resented its cultural hegemony ( especially on the Left, ironically), yet at the same time have been dependent on it.

So true. Particularly for those on the left. Watching it grow over the last few years, particularly with Gaza situation it just became more evident US voters would say off you sod then.

It's that luxury belief that you can denigrate for years and not expect people to change their response

There was a poll done in Germany (it's impossible to exaggerate how obsessed a certain class of Germans are with US politics) showing that 88% expected Harris to be elected president.

This boggles my mind. Even if you hate Trump, surely it was obvious he had at least an even chance of winning.

Unfortunately a lot of the luxury belief class work in the media, politics or academia, and they don't try to understand the world around them, they reflect their class's worldview back to themselves and expect the rest of us to believe it.

This is an extremely long read, but I was fascinated by it and aspects could be seen to stack up with this information about Stonewall. If anyone has the time or inclination to read it I'd love to hear your opinion on it. I'm not sure what I think personally.

There's lots here that isn't so relevant (the Iranian stuff for example) and the final section isn't the bit I'm interested in - more the material about Obama and influencing public opinion.

www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment

I would imagine their contracts have a lot of small print basically saying they’re not liable for anything you do based on their ‘advice’