Is this why only UKIP wanted to cut foreign aid budget

scorza

scorza

scorza

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Apologies for Daily Fail link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...t-cats-built-1-4billion-empire-tax-money.html

Caroline Pinder passionately believes in the power of aid to help the world’s poor. She has dedicated the past 25 years of her life to this cause, working on projects often supported by British taxpayers in two dozen countries from Albania to Zimbabwe.

But last month she quit – dismayed at how the Government has lost control of its bloated foreign aid budgets to the ‘poverty barons’: a small group of profit-hungry private consultancies who now dominate the aid industry.
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Jobs for the boys...
 
Anybody with two brain cells could do 5 minute of research and show a large amount is wasted by just throwing it to corrupted regimes.

That annual figure is frankly disgusting when we are cutting front line services. We should have a reactive foreign aid budget of 2 billion quid and use it when needed.

Ebola, Nepal quake etc
.
 
I still believe foreign aid should be pooled and distributed to/by Red Cross / UN (or another body) where required. Or something to that effect.
 
Foreign aid is basically bribes for the most part
But we can't change it anyway
The UK has passed a bill that enshrines in law its commitment to spend 0.7% of its gross national income (GNI) on aid every year, making it the first G7 country to meet the UN’s 45-year-old aid spending target.
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-d...-passes-bill-law-aid-target-percentage-income

Why don't they pass a bill for NHS spending or army spending


Here's how we hit 0.7%
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...oes-to-EU-in-rush-to-hit-targets-say-MPs.html
It emerged earlier this year that civil servants went on a £1 billion spending spree in just eight weeks to hit the Government’s aid target. The extra cash was spent at the end of 2013 on humanitarian programmes in Syria and the Philippines, and a fund started by Bill Gates to help victims of Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.

MPs said the fact that the taxpayer funds were spent so quickly raised serious questions about whether value for money was achieved.

The Government’s overseas aid budget has grown in recent years thanks to a commitment in the Coalition agreement to spend 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product on developing countries.
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Doesn't seem to be much about actual results in that article - other than throwing around some accusations without in many cases further details - and a lot of sensationalist journalism (surprise). As with charities - proper implementation, efficient organisation and running, etc. doesn't come cheap neither do the people with the skills and qualifications to pull that off... I'd want to compare what is being delivered for the money spent before condemning people for throwing a lot of money around.

(Not that I'd be at all surprised to find substantial corruption with that level of money being thrown around).
 
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OldCoals said:
You only have to look at the billions of pounds that has been poured into Africa to see that it doesn't work.
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Obviously you have a control Africa for comparison purposes? Certainly a lot of the money is wasted in local corruption, but in most cases the alternative is nothing gets through. I take it that you have no problem in allowing people to starve or live in grinding poverty just because of a government that they have no control over? Or do you only apply this to people with dark skins?

Much the same applies to the companies making money out of charity work here, and the people making careers out of it - getting into charity work is almost harder than getting a spad job these days, and requires roughly the same connections. As above, the alternative is doing nothing. In an ideal world we would know exactly how to spend the money, and be able to spend it directly in achieving the desired aims. But it's not an ideal world. But the DM story tells us a lot more about the DM than it does about the story (to be fair, this is true of almost all newspaper stories). For a start, the DM has a long history of hating all large charities, most medium and small charities, and any charity working abroad except in exceptional natural disaster. They see charities as both a) socialist, and b) not socialist enough (doublethink is the default state for the DM).
 
OldCoals said:
You only have to look at the billions of pounds that has been poured into Africa to see that it doesn't work.
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This opinion is a massive part of the problem.

It is just incorrect to say that foreign aid does not help , Africa has slowly been improving almost my entire lifetime in very large parts due to foreign aid.

http://www.economist.com/news/speci...-improved-over-past-decade-says-oliver-august.

Foreign aid from rich countries like Britain can make an enormous difference to peoples lives that are so far below our standards as to make it hard to think about.

That an amount is stolen or wasted is absolutely not a good enough reason to want to stop it.

Argue for it to be more accountable etc if you must but never to stop it.
 
Foreign aid is as bad as oil for holding back the development of countries it breaks the link between good Government and income. When foreigners are throwing cash at you why care what the peasants think.

I haven't fact checked it but I read a Telegraph article that said Ethiopia now has double the population it did before the 1980's famine, effectively we have paid for the next famine by allowing food and population to exceed a more reasonable balance of what can be grown in country. It's not like they're all so busy working in high tech industries or resource rich that they can outsource food production to some poorer neighbour.

We need to buy off these countries and encourage rule of law not feed them. That way the road to prosperity is through development not handouts and may be more sustainable.
 
I think they just foreign aid to funnel tax payer money around, it could be used for all kind of illegal means and nobody can track it back to us... even if they could we just blame corrupt governments etc.
 
Meridian said:
Obviously you have a control Africa for comparison purposes? Certainly a lot of the money is wasted in local corruption, but in most cases the alternative is nothing gets through. I take it that you have no problem in allowing people to starve or live in grinding poverty just because of a government that they have no control over? Or do you only apply this to people with dark skins?
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here ladies and gentleman.... we have a typical left wing nut job who plays the "you must be racist" card, when someone has a decent argument.

anyway..... the whole foreign aid contribution is a tiny % of our GDP. the corruption needs to be sorted out in Africa before funding them anymore money, I would personally rather see the money spent on the NHS than paying for someones flash BMW or Audi abroad...
 
[TW]Fox;28079027 said:
Wow, I'm not exactly a fan of OldCoals views but that was an incredible leap to make. Where did THAT come from?!
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typical response when people criticise Africa


zomg you must be racist!!!

frankly we need better controls on where foreign aid money ends up, Africa's main problem is inept African Leaders
 
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