Foreign aid: Now will the Coalition listen on overseas aid?

RSS Feed

Foreign aid: Now will the Coalition listen on overseas aid?

March 29th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By
Daily Mail Comment

PUBLISHED:

17:33 EST, 28 March 2012

|

UPDATED:

03:46 EST, 29 March 2012

As an all-party Lords committee endorses everything this paper has argued about Britain’s bloated overseas aid, the Mail has just one question for the Coalition: now will you listen?

In its uncompromising report, the Economic Affairs Committee urges unanimously that the Government should abandon its plans for a law committing taxpayers to a 37 per cent real-terms increase in aid by 2014, which would take the total to a blistering £12billion.

After studying all the evidence, the Peers conclude that the proposal to set aid at a legally binding 0.7 per cent of national income would serve only to encourage more waste and corruption in recipient countries.

When will they listen? An all-party Lords committee has endorsed everything this paper has argued about Britain's bloated overseas aid

When will they listen? An all-party Lords committee has endorsed everything this paper has argued about Britain’s bloated overseas aid

Echoing this paper, they also argue that the Coalition should speed up its withdrawal of funding to India (dismissed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee as an unwanted ‘peanut’), while slashing contributions to wasteful aid programmes run by the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Commission.

With British families suffering the biggest income drop for 35 years, this report surely cannot be ignored.

Indeed, it’s a deepening stain on the Coalition that it extorts ever greater sums, whether from pensioners or single-earner parents, to pour into the pockets of corrupt foreign officials. And all so that posturing politicians can claim they care about poverty, while caring nothing about the practicalities of relieving it.

Meanwhile, for all the talk of cuts, the bitter truth is that ministers are actually increasing overall public spending. For figures released with the Budget last week reveal that the total is due to grow by a crippling £86billion over the life of this Parliament, making this the most profligate Government in history.

What a shameful betrayal of our children, who will bear the burden of Britain’s appalling and ever mounting debt.

We say it again. For our country’s future, public spending must come down. And overseas aid – often corrupt, wasteful and counter-productive – is the obvious place to begin.

In the union’s pocket

Forget the chaos in the Coalition, with one minister advising us to stockpile petrol, while another tells us to do no such thing.

As moral questions go, they don’t come much easier to answer than the one thrown up by the tanker drivers’ strike.

Is it right, or is it wrong, for 1,001 trade unionists, earning an average of £45,000 a year, to hold 60million people to ransom over Easter – jeopardising family holidays, businesses, the wider economy and possibly even hospital patients’ lives – in pursuit of better terms and conditions?

Damaging: Ed Miliband is refusing to condemn Unite's plans to hold a fuel strike

Damaging: Ed Miliband is refusing to condemn Unite’s plans to hold a fuel strike

Yet simple though this question is, Ed Miliband still can’t quite bring himself to answer it.

Deeply compromised by his debt to Unite – which supplies a quarter of Labour’s funding and whose militant leader gave him his job – he urges instead that the Government should do a deal with the drivers as soon as possible.

And this is a man who offers himself as our next prime minister?

A bit late, Your Grace

HALLELUJAH! In a brave display of moral leadership, the Archbishop of Canterbury warns that Britain’s ‘fixation’ with minority rights threatens to fragment society. And, in a separate address, he goes on to attack the corrosive effects of welfare dependency.

The Mail applauds him.

But what a pity he has waited until announcing his retirement, after nine years in the job, to preach anything that makes sense.

Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts,
or debate this issue live on our message boards.

The comments below have not been moderated.

Newest
Oldest
Best rated
Worst rated

The real political funding shocker is how Gordon Brown was blackmailed by the Unions into signing the contract for 2 large aircraft carriers, (the mod wanted 2 small carriers with VSTOL aircaft but due to delays with the development of the VSTOL aircraft changed it to 1 large carrier with conventional aircraft) but the unions wanted to secure jobs for the shipyards and subsuduary companies which would supply components, most of which are in Gordon Browns constituency. So the unions witheld the funding for Gordon Browns election campaign until the contract that they wanted was signed. This is what caused the big hole in the MOD budget. Cameron was talking about this immediately before the Budget Statement. If you look back at Hansard you will seen numerous jibes by cameron about Labour/Unions, most recently a labour MP read a letter from MOD regarding politics and procurement, swiftly followed by Eds buy british speech. Ergo power struggle Gov-Unions silent Labour.

– Thomas Atkins, London, 29/3/2012 11:33

The companies who have hired these tanker drivers should sack them like they would for any other employee who refused to work. There most be thousands of drivers out of work in Britain who would rather work than cripple Britain as these renegrades are hell bent on doing!
Why these clownish drivers continue to pay protechtion money to Unite for the right to a job. They will continue to put their livelyhoods at risk as 1,000,000 miners did and have been surviing on sickies for thirty years because of it.
The TUC mafia have already put at least twenty million workers out work permanently with these wild cat strikes having destroyed the jobs of those working on the docks iron steel industries British motor corporatation plus millions of other jobs to small to get media attention.

– BASR, Saundersfoot Pembrokeshire, 29/3/2012 10:26

I for one have been at the barricade over Foreign Aid from the outset ! it should,nt be misconstrued that this includes Humanitarian Aid. Britain should help themselves, to be able to help others and the daily Mail and ‘House of Lords’ are
Spot On with this………..So “Well Done !”

– George, Netherlands, 29/3/2012 10:22

India deserves nothing!!! It’s obvious that all our aid plus what USA gives has gone to a select few and zillions of those buggers live still in horrible desperate poverty, still have no toilets and in most cases no home…revolting that we continue to finance the few wealthiest Indians ! British needs to get over it’s colonial guilt and stop payment now!!!! They have a space program!!!! 90% live in abject poverty!! What’s wring with these fools who insist on giving them hard earned Brit money?!? Shame shame shame on India for accepting these “peanuts” and us for giving!!!! God where is this PM common sense gone?!? He hasn’t any!!!

– D.A.ward, London, UK, 29/3/2012 09:51

As the government has “spare” money for overseas aid it can now all be diverted to the armed forces budget, where it is needed. Overseas aid should be restricted for famine relief only. No money should ever be sent to unfriendly countries.

– Steve, Palookaville, 29/3/2012 09:43

I never give to charities were my money is or could be going abroad,I always say to collectors that the government have already without my permission have already made my donation with my taxes that they have stolen to send abroad.

– Peter, Solihull, 29/3/2012 09:40

I don’t want to hear about foreign Aid or overseas vaccination programmes until this Government does what previous Governments haven’t, and bring back T.B vaccinations in schools. We were on top of it, I and my girls were in a school programme 60/80/s.it was almost gone. The Today programme informs us there are mobile units in London because it is so bad, Migrants like those sleeping under flyovers need to be vaccinated. Caught early it will cost the N.H.S 15,000 per person or, 75,000 if later and it will all be wasted if they don’t keep up the treatment. My Grandsons can’t have the vaccine in school because they aren’t the right ethnicity. Yet they are vulnerable to it. This is madness. On the strikes. Having lived through the 70’s I have no sympathy for being held to ransom. On the Archbishop. We’ve been crying out for years for someone to shut the stable doors. The horses have bolted, needed reining in along time ago. Out of touch or what, he’s only now getting it.

– Mrs. B, GB ., 29/3/2012 09:21

The hypocrisy of people like The Lambeth Beardie knows no bounds! Now,
safely retiring to Academe, Beardie can say what he should have said years ago – that the silencing of the majority of the public, upon threat of legal action,
if they should so much as criticise any aspect of minority favouritism, is utterly
wrong, and that the sapping of the nation’s vitality by encouraging a Welfare
dependency is equally undesirable! What benefit have people like this been,
when they know what’s going wrong, but look the other way and waffle on
instead, following the mob – when they should be leading!+++And the further
hypocrisy of this hopeless government, trying to buy international “street cred”
by using Our money to enrich even further those various foreign despots, spivs and chancers abroad, who just can’t believe their luck at finding some dopey
British “mark” to fund their various corrupt activities! No doubt Mitchell would say, ” the Granny-tax will help to pay it”!
chancer

– John Smith, Birmingham, England, 29/3/2012 08:50

‘He who steals must return seven-fold of what has been stolen’!! That’s what the Bible says. Someone in Government granting these funds must know their Bible!!!!

– Hmmmm, UK, 29/3/2012 08:03

” After studying all the evidence, the Peers conclude that the proposal to set aid at a legally binding 0.7 per cent of national income would serve only to encourage more waste and corruption in recipient countries. ” More importantly, foreign aid from this country allows its recipients to fail to solve their own problems – the main one being over-population and the consequent ever-increasing demands on local resources. If basket-case countries are struggling now, imagine what it’ll be like for them if major ‘charity fatigue’ sets in.

– Philip, Bankrupted Britain, 29/3/2012 07:58

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.