Anybody who observes London’s politics will know and understand that the current Mayor of Greater London, Sadiq Khan, loves to spunk taxpayers money at his pet projects or on stuff that burnishes his own image. Although this is mostly a criminal waste and an annoyance to London’s taxpayers, up until now it has not been known if any seriously destructive groups have been funded from Khan’s City Hall.

But now, thanks to an article by Guido Fawkes, we know that money was granted not just to one of the usual identity politics groups, but also to a group that said it was working to reduce ‘youth violence’ that laid siege to a London police station.

Guido said:

New FoI data shows Sadiq Khan has ploughed £100,000 of taxpayers money into a group that laid siege to a police station during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. The 4Front Project, based in Barnet, was set up in 2012 to tackle “serious youth violence”, however the arrest of a 14-year-old carrying 13 bags of suspected cannabis led to a major protest led by the group, during which young men “obstructed a police vehicle from leaving the scene”. Numerous officers were injured in skirmishes led by 30-40 protestors…

According to FoI data, the Mayor’s “Violence Reduction Unit Community Seed Fund” dished out £50,000 to 4Front in 2019/20, and £46,042 in 2018/19 in the hope of delivering ” a youth-led intervention project for 100 young people involved in and affected by serious youth violence” on a local estate.

I fail to see how funding this particular group has done or will do anything to reduce the appalling and often deadly levels of youth violence that has afflicted London during Khan’s reign. The money that has been dished out to 4Front could have gone to any number of groups that may well have had a greater impact on reducing youth violence than 4Front obviously has. That sort of money might even have paid for a police presence on the afflicted housing estate and which may have done far more to change things for the better than what 4Front has done.

I suspect that what has happened here is that this money from the taxpayer has been utterly wasted on stuff that might look good on paper or on a grant application, but which has had no real world impact on youth violence in London. This project was to have been targeted at 100 young people which works out at £1000 each, a significant sum which could have been used to bring some of them back into education or even into other crime diversion projects. Sadly this money has been spent on a group that organised an aggressive demonstration that caused injuries to police officers instead of dealing with their grievance regarding the 14 year old boy in a more mature and maybe more effective manner.

Every day that Khan remains in City Hall taxpayer’s money is wasted hand over fist. London’s taxpayers have not had their moneys worth out of 4Front and most certainly not from Mayor Khan.