Foreign Aid petition

What do I reckon ? Do you mean, what do I think ?

I’m going to credit you with rather more intelligence than you sometimes display – tho’ that might be deliberate !

I think that we need to take care of problems within our own boundaries before distributing largesse around the world to people who won’t always use it in the way the donor intended.

If foreign aid is to be dispensed it should not be in the form of cash or credits but in the form of goods and equipment.

If foreign aid is to be dispensed the distribution of it should be closely supervised and controlled. How it is distributed and where it goes should be the subject of thorough and diligent accountancy.

That will do for starters.

:applause: :angel: 🙂 😉

So lads the bbc article says the problem is a lack of education and you’re proposing we withdraw the funding for at least some of their education programmes?. Shining wisdom there!.

John, I know how you like questions in unanswered paragraphs re-iterated over and over again. I’ll make this easy for you….it seems to be one you missed?

In reality its extremely unlikely it would….rather it would go to debt reduction. You dont really care about that though do you John. You just dont like the idea of us giving money to foreigners period.

What do you reckon?

:applause: :angel: 🙂 😉

This might be a pretty good reason not to fund £400m annual aid budget to Pakistan…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27208964

Does one really need more evidence of how well the aid budget to Pakistan works: I have it on unimpeachable authority that :

Female genital mutilation is now at an end
Homosexuality is now well and gladly tolerated in the country
Islamic punishments for adultery are now a thing of the past
Queues outside the tax collectors offices as a testimony to the efficiency of the tax collecting service.
Christianity, plus other religions are encouraged to build their churches.

These are just a few examples of the new pluralistic Pakistani society brought about by the imput of foreign aid. Think how much more we could achieve by perhaps doubling the aid. Why should the overpampered, greedy, self indulgent West continue to prosper at the expense of our Eastern brothers ? What does it matter if a few hundred childrens lives are hazarded by the NHS’s denial of expensive life saving drugs ?

We must continually remind ourselves that charity begins abroad. No more will we feather our own nests at the expense of the comfort and well being of the less fortunate. There is a lesson here for all of us. How much more savage and indiscriminate would the recent minor European assaults have been if it hadn’t been for the benefit of compassionate foreign aid directed and used in the correct channels ?

We have much for which to be grateful.

I don’t care enough. Petition left unsigned.

Entirely as expected. Completely in character !

For those who care enough…

I don’t care enough. Petition left unsigned.

This might be a pretty good reason not to fund £400m annual aid budget to Pakistan…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27208964

UK to end financial aid to India by 2015? :rolleyes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20265583

An element of thread drift but I think an important point to make is that it would in fact be grossly irresponsible to throw yet more cash at our already hugely over financed health and social security budgets. These cash cows need massive reform and overhaul rather than more and more cash. We could indeed use the extra cash were it available to reduce our spiralling debt mountain.

It begs the same question were we to vote to leave the EU. What would we use the balance of our budget contributions for? Would we fund the same projects and subsidise the same institutions which currently benefit from these EU contributions? Or would we push more to debt reduction?

John.

Permit me to re-arrange your quote: “The UK’s aid commitment means we can be proud to be a country that meets its responsibilities to first its own citizens, prioritises their needs and then ensures that overseas aid goes to those most in need”.

This is your last para on post 3 going by what I see on screen. Not only is there no actual question there the entire premise is absurd.

Once again, as it is a fact that you are trying desperately to ignore, the value of the money spent on overseas aid is equal to 0.7% of GDP compared to near 40% of GDP spent on Social Welfare…approximately the same amount that is leftover as unclaimed surplus every year. The claim that money gone to international aid is stolen out the pockets of our own is ridiculous….plenty is poured down the welfare black hole in this country.

Infrastructure projects not being funded?. Are you currently on prescription medication?. Have you heard of HS2?. How about Crossrail?. Do you think the endless rounds of studies into new runways in the south are free?. You dont like the prioritisation of the funds?. Unlucky!. Dont try and make out the spend is not there though!.

NHS. Funded to more than £110bn….theres only 60 odd million of us on the whole island!. If they cant work out core medical care for this number of people when its funded to the tune of £2000 for every man, woman and child in the country there’s something deeply wrong that needs changing. When breast implants are being provided on the NHS over critical-care paediatric medicine, as you claim, then the problem clearly isnt the amount of money in the pot.

That last one is the bottom line to this….its not ‘charity begins at home’ thats actually your point. You haven’t the first idea that, if the aid budget was shut off tomorrow, the money would be redirected into all those projects you list. In reality its extremely unlikely it would….rather it would go to debt reduction. You dont really care about that though do you John. You just dont like the idea of us giving money to foreigners period. As I said elsewhere fella….you get marks for consistency.

the only agenda here is your own John.
As the good Captain Jack Sparrow once said

the problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude to the problem. Do you understand?

Truth, you can’t handle the truth.

Regarding the ‘invitation to reply’ see my earlier post #8

I thought I did in #4

Also I agree with this comment of yours and in fact the whole post
“Yes, we should help with overseas aid but, a BIG but, only when we’ve solved some of our own problems. Charity begins at home. I’ll be blue in the face before some of those with some kind of an agenda recognise that truth.”

In the meantime……….

The problems at home continue.

Apart from our inability to properly fund medical aid for some of the most deserving in our society, we are failing to properly maintain and repair our infrastructure. Our highways are full of potholes. Belatedly, the Govt. promises funds to make repairs. It has yet to happen.

What was once one of the best State education systems in the world lies shattered and broken – according to educationalist observers. Maintaining a decent and healthy level of home heating during the winter is affordable only by a wealthy few. People manage their bills by a monthly payment process or foregoing some other item of domestic necessity.

Cheap poundshops are a growth industry. Public libraries close, Citizens Advice Bureau’s pull down the shutters. My local subsidised water ferry which, when working saves a road journey of some eight miles, no longer runs for lack of a small subsidy.

Fourteen billions of British taxpayers cash would go a very long way towards solving many of these problems with perhaps some left over to provide the sop to conscience demanded by some – mercifully few – of the commentators on this forum.

Yes, we should help with overseas aid but, a BIG but, only when we’ve solved some of our own problems. Charity begins at home. I’ll be blue in the face before some of those with some kind of an agenda recognise that truth.

I extend my invitation to reply to my last paragraph at 3#. I think I’ll be waiting a long time !

Thanks for that, Jonesey. Always good to have some personal experience input to these discussions where most of us are flailing about in the dark without unadulterated facts. No doubt there are many such examples as the one you cite and the corollary of that is that there is also much money, wasted, lost and corrupted. I think we can agree at least that the aid programme needs an overhaul to improve the positions of both the recipients and the donor – the UK taxpayer.

I can only speak, with any kind of certainty, on the Pakistan issue here charlie but there is governance of the aid insofar as its possible. My company supported the British Council and I’ve had cause to meet with a few of their guys over the years and I’ve picked up bits and pieces of what really goes on. The Pakistan thing was one that stood out. The money provided was tail-loaded so, after seed money went in to open new schools that the parents could trust to give a real education to their kids, paid on a sliding scale by the numbers that passed through with demonstrable education. Basically they were rewarded for success.

I’m sure that its not the case everywhere. I’m sure some aid money is thinly-veiled bribery and I’m sure some money that couldve gone to aid starving, one-legged female binmen in Lowestoft has been wasted on some el Presidente’s collection of Mercedes limo’s. The point is though that a lot hasnt and that we have had good people out there doing good in these communities and, in the process, contributing to our society just as much.

To my mind there are two problems with dispensing aid. Firstly the crass decision by the previous government to ring fence the percentage given and the second is that it is paid largely to those already corrupt or likely to be corrupted. So there is little or no accountability.

The aid budget should be reviewed annually and the percentage reduced according to the prevailing fiscal situation and the domestic demands on treasury funds. Aid should only be given to accredited groups and or charities or better still to specific projects. Never to governments or NGOs.

Wonderful to have an argument when you know that there is no way to replay history without the sums invested in those countries to identify the difference. I’d suggest that sticking our head in the sand and wishing, fervently, for Africa to just crawl off and be someone elses problem is exactly whats got us to where we are now. We have, by historical conduct, an internationalist foreign policy….this is in any way you measure it still the right policy. Those who have no voice in world events can do nothing to control them and they become victims to the will of those who do. I do not want to wake up one day and find that the kind of short-sighted isolationism you are promoting really has relegated us to international insignificance.

“You have to be able to see that “

Yes, indeed I do. I fully understand your comments and your argument. You have a problem. There isn’t a shred of any reliable evidence that pouring cash or kind into third world countries produces an outcome that is at all satisfactory to the inhabitants of those often benighted countries or, benefits in any desirable way the original donor.

There is a means by which we can roughly measure the effect of our largesse. If we take 1960 as our start point for charitable donations both from public and private sources into Africa generally, the goals then were to improve the lives of the peoples of Africa receiving our donations by overcoming disease, providing clean water, providing elementary medical care all within a framework of (laughably) democratic accountability.

There has been some success but, that success is not reflected in the totality of the huge sums that have been donated over the fifty year period in question. It is known that from national governments alone, that more than approximately 500 billion dollars by extrapolation has disappeared into the Dark Continent.

What to-day is the situation ? Africa still struggles. An increasing population competing for arable land, creates tribal tensions. Tho’ much less, the scourge of malaria is still present as are the multitude of other debilitating and fatal diseases. The charitable appeals for donations to provide clean water goes on. Corruption in political life is endemic – look at South Africa as an outstanding example but, never mind, they are free from apartheid !

In short, Africa is still a ‘basket case’. And you want to pump more aid into this bottomless pit for no significant gain ? I’m not too worried or concerned about not pumping aid into Ethiopia or Bangladesh in the vain hope that we can educate them out of poverty. We cannot be the paymaster to the world. Charity begins at home. Let us first sort out our own problems before interfering in the affairs and problems of others – FOR NO SIGNIFICANT BENEFIT TO THE DONOR !

No, it most certainly isn’t ‘money well spent’. The question of radicalising madrassa’s is something that the local authority should deal with, it should not be a charge on the British taxpayer or, any other foreign taxpayer for that matter, for the rather simple reason that the ultimate destination of any funding is beyond control, as confirmed by the ONS – on another matter to be sure but, still connected with foreign aid funding – of the donor.

As for your nonsensical argument in your first paragraph. Yes, if it is at the expense of the 14 billions of foreign aid we should certainly prioritise funding into our welfare state for the benefit of our citizens. Prioritising yet again, according to severity of need, which places breast augmentation well down on the list and drug therapy for children likely to experience the horrors of the meningitis bacterium high on the list. It isn’t a difficult concept.

It is beyond belief that a comfortably off, well cushioned society such as ours can still experience social deprivation at home while doing little about it, while shovelling vast riches to the unaccountable third world. Are we stark mad ?

Finally, if you want to be taken seriously, rubbish your opponents arguments by all means but do not rubbish the opponent. Personal insults make you look cheap and diminish your standing.

If you have the time and the inclination perhaps you and Trekkie would please tell us all how much you agree with the last para. of 3#.

John,

If you dont want the validity of your opinions critiqued dont make idiotic generalisations about the adherents of a religion!. Also dont try and insinuate that the British taxpayer is footing the entire bill for something like counter-radicalisation in Pakistan when clearly its an issue on the local agenda and we, as a nation with a vested interest in sorting the problem out over there so it lessens the chances of it coming here, are just helping out. Bit of intellectual honesty would go a great distance here yes?.

So we should keep pouring billion after billion into welfare in your estimation?. Very socialist of you!. The point is that while there are stupid and unnecessary procedures being undertaken by the NHS and similar ‘wooly’ schemes funded through the immense social welfare budget (remember 15bn not claimed annually its that bloated!) at the taxpayers expense we absolutely cannot take away money like that to Pakistan or like the money going into providing education in Ethiopia or Bangladesh as these are the investments that will reduce security threats and immigration issues facing us down the track.

Your basic premise is wrong….its not about charity. Its in our interest to see these countries develop and become successful….even if you take away any stance of morality and just look at the simple cost/benefit calculation helping people to build modern, educated, communities and giving people the incentive to stay at home and not go for the rubber boat over the Med has to be a good thing. You have to be able to see that?.

Parliament will debate the content of the petition on the 13th June, next.

No, it most certainly isn’t ‘money well spent’. The question of radicalising madrassa’s is something that the local authority should deal with, it should not be a charge on the British taxpayer or, any other foreign taxpayer for that matter, for the rather simple reason that the ultimate destination of any funding is beyond control, as confirmed by the ONS – on another matter to be sure but, still connected with foreign aid funding – of the donor.

As for your nonsensical argument in your first paragraph. Yes, if it is at the expense of the 14 billions of foreign aid we should certainly prioritise funding into our welfare state for the benefit of our citizens. Prioritising yet again, according to severity of need, which places breast augmentation well down on the list and drug therapy for children likely to experience the horrors of the meningitis bacterium high on the list. It isn’t a difficult concept.

It is beyond belief that a comfortably off, well cushioned society such as ours can still experience social deprivation at home while doing little about it, while shovelling vast riches to the unaccountable third world. Are we stark mad ?

Finally, if you want to be taken seriously, rubbish your opponents arguments by all means but do not rubbish the opponent. Personal insults make you look cheap and diminish your standing.

If you have the time and the inclination perhaps you and Trekkie would please tell us all how much you agree with the last para. of 3#.