Are British green groups just blowing $160 million per year for no good reason, or are they doing lots of "valuable" stuff, like interfering with oil drilling?

Environmental activism needs its own revolution to regain its teeth | Charles Secrett | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Worryingly, in every major green group, managers, administrators, communicators and fundraisers outnumber campaigners and researchers. Too many staff have become obsessed with the process of running an organisation. Interminable meetings, not action, are the order of most days. All too often, fundraisers and PR teams, not campaigners, call the shots.

Today's activists regard once radical organisations as part of the NGO establishment: out-of-touch, ineffective and bureaucratic. The wheel has turned full circle. It is time to rethink and reorganise again.

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth hit back over 'out-of-touch' criticism | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Interminable meetings, not action, are the order of most days," wrote , FoE executive director until 2003, in an article for the Guardian. [Charles Secrett, FoE executive director until 2003] estimates UK groups like FoE, Greenpeace, RSPB and WWF, which have millions of members, spend over £100m a year. His comments have drawn an angry response from those leading today's groups.
...
Ben Stewart, the head of media at Greenpeace, said: "I suppose I'm one of the PR people Charles is talking about. Right now I'm aboard one of our ships somewhere off the coast of Greenland where we've been hanging off an oil rig and stopping risky deep water oil drilling for several days. We've had 20 people arrested, more than half of whom are still in jail, and I know they're very grateful for the staff back home, including the fundraisers, who made our campaign out here possible."