Feminist coding and Armenian fashion week – my findings from Spaff

The Spectator Project Against Frivolous Funding, or Spaff, has been launched this week to shine a light on government waste. To help track down examples of frivolous spending, The Spectator has created a search engine that allows anyone to look at government transactions, foreign aid projects and procurement contracts all in one place for the first time.

If you’re like me, and your eyes light up at the idea of rooting out government profligacy, the search engine is a treat. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

Let’s start with the Arts Council, which has burnt through a tremendous amount of taxpayer cash. Particular funding highlights are a feminist creative coding camp for £5,000, a production of ‘Islamajam’ for £29,000 and a £90,000 bung to a group aiming to ‘decolonise’ pole dancing.

On the weirder end of the spectrum, the Arts Council has been funding a show in Thanet named ‘Daddy Issues’ (£30,000), and productions such as ‘Vagina Cake’ and ‘Where’s My Vagina’ (£12,500 and £22,934, respectively). It gave another £14,692 to the ‘FATTY FAT FAT TOUR’.

Recently, you might have been shocked by the crazy projects our American cousins have been funding through USAID, which is in the process of being shut down by Donald Trump. American taxpayers, for instance, were likely horrified when they learned recently they’d contributed £19,869 to a drag show seminar for Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador.

If you think that is shocking though, wait until you hear what the Foreign Office has been up to. What do Armenian fashion week, fighting gender bias in the North Macedonian judiciary, and ‘climate smart villages’ in India have in common? Correct, they’re all funded by the British taxpayer. In those cases, the damage is £28,713, £45,808 and £35,817 respectively. On top of those examples, and endless similar ones, I’ve also discovered that the running total for British gifts to Mauritius is £205,014 larger than we’d thought with the country benefitting from three separate FCDO schemes, the largest being aimed at supporting ‘institutional strengthening for climate disclosure.’

Using the Spaff search engine, you often get the impression that civil servants are being taken for mugs. What do you think is a reasonable price for an office chair? Well, at DCMS, they seem to believe £1,000 is the going rate for a ‘workplace adjustment chair and footrest’. The Home Office is equally guilty of this: it has spent £900 on a single work jacket. As is the Cabinet Office, who spent £1,273.50 on Nespresso in just two months towards the end of last year.

Now it’s easy to look at this mountain of waste and become increasingly depressed about what your hard-earned money is being spent on. But at least with Spaff trawling for wasteful, inefficient and downright mad spending, it has become a lot harder for the government to keep throwing your money down the drain.