Taxpayer Footing £1 Million Bill for Students to “Touch As a Mole” – Guido Fawkes

Taxpayer Footing £1 Million Bill for Students to “Touch As a Mole”

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The National Audit Office released a scathing report into UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the bloated quango dishing out billions of taxpayer cash a year on research projects. The watchdog raised red flags over its ability to prevent fraud and questioned whether it’s delivering bang for the public buck, citing a lack of “measurable objectives” that’s made it hard to track progress at a strategic level. No surprises there…

One such research project that caught UK DOGE’s eye is a £958,773 two-year initiative at The Open University titled ‘Feeling the Untouchable: Haptic Touch Experiences for Naturalistic Learning.’ The project aims to “foster affective connections to nature” in primary and secondary schools by “allowing students to sense an underground environment through touch as a mole, or enter a flower or hive as a bee.” It is also discovering how students “can feel the effects of water currents on sand forming ripples, and air and water currents on the collective behaviours of fish and bird swarms.” Eh?

The taxpayer-funding runs out in September 2026. For £958,773, you could:

• Hire 30 prison officers.
• Buy 10,770 British Army Mk7 Helmets.
• Purchase 87 unmarked police cars.

John O’Connell from the Taxpayers’ Alliance said:

“Ministers have lost control of UKRI as it squanders money on crackpot schemes and divisive ideological research. Serious failings in oversight and reporting at UKRI combined with a lack of direction from government departments leave taxpayers seriously exposed to fraud and waste.”

‘Quango bonfire’ latest…