The Uk In Debt? Not In The Least It Would Appear.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3337073/5million-foreign-aid-boost-fishing-Caribbean-Despair-Cameron-says-money-help-countries-make-maritime-advantages.html

£5 million to boost fishing in the Caribbean, all part of a £26millon aid package?

What could our own people do with that amount?

[fiction-factory]

I read it as being consultants who are organising projects. It may include things like the cost of hotels/flights. The words 'up to' could of course mean £100 a day normally, with just one case costing something like £1000.

[anotheoldgit]

THECORBYLOON

Perhaps you should read my Spectator link? Here is a section from it.

*** As to class, foreign aid is a comparatively middle- and upper-class business and a middle- and upper-class enthusiasm. It starts with a gap year to exciting places like Nairobi or New Delhi, being driven around in Land Cruisers and lecturing adults on how to run their countries. To some, aid work is attractive because of the adventure and the thrill of danger. To others, the lure is endless gap-year exoticism and third-world partying (with the additional benefit of being one of the good guys). You can earn a decent, high-status living in the aid world, without soiling your hands in trade or industry.

Clare Lockhart, author of Fixing Failed States, likens the aid world to the Victorian church, which offered employment and status to the second sons of the landed gentry. And certainly, if you visit the bars and clubs frequented by aid workers in many parts of the third world, you could be forgiven for seeing the aid business as a sort of white-knuckle dating agency for middle-class Westerners. For the more academic, it’s also a ticket to the lucrative five-star conference circuit.

It is probably unfair to suggest that class solidarity is a conscious reason for the Cameron government’s attachment to aid. But class attitudes and sympathies have a subconscious effect. The Notting Hill elite is more likely to encounter or engage with poor Africans or Asians (on their holidays, or working trips abroad) than to encounter rock-bottom life at home. They’re more likely to have visited Kenya than Rochdale. And if the actions (rather than the words) of the Cameron government are anything to go by, they find it harder to empathise with a working-class squaddie in a wheelchair than with a hungry African family. Their gap years prepare them for philanthropy in foreign parts, but not to confront life in a British sink estate. ***

[sp1814]

I am in debt.

I have a mortgage.

That is a debt I'm paying off.

However, even overall I owe more money than I actually have (as does everyone with a mortgage), it doesn't stop me from giving money to charity out of my earnings.

If you think of foreign aid in those terms, it explains the UK (and not just the UK) spends a proportion of its money on aid.

It's such a 'small' amount, that if we stopped all foreign aid the impact on our finances would be negligble.

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

If you are talking proportions, then it is just a small amount to provide some African despot with another luxury car, but if that money was spent instead on providing an ex British soldier with a prosthetic leg?

The there is no comparison.

[Canary42]

Phoney Patriot knocking Britain - AGAIN.

[jomifl]

I used to be paid up to a million per day. What I got paid was also a lot less than a million per day.

[anotheoldgit]

Canary42

/// Phoney Patriot knocking Britain - AGAIN. ///

Criticising the way that some are destroying this once great country, is not "knocking Britain".

But then you are obviously not intelligent enough to realise that.

[Svejk]

///It's such a 'small' amount, that if we stopped all foreign aid the impact on our finances would be negligble. ///

So the left are fond of telling us. £250 million per week would save a lot of the 'cutbacks' you're constantly whinging about.

[sp1814]

AOG

The comparison fits exactly.

And are servicemen denied prosthetic legs now?

When did the NHS implement this policy?

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

No not to my knowledge, but it is a matter of choices, do we throw money away or can we use it for better things in the UK.

[sp1814]

We're not throwing money away by allocating part of the GDP to foreign aid.

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

/// We're not throwing money away by allocating part of the GDP to foreign aid. ///

In some cases that is entirely a matter of opinion.

[sp1814]

No.

It's your opinion.

[douglas9401]

Therefore a matter of opinion. Stop playing 'I want the last word even if it's carp'.

[Bigbad]

My opinion, SP, mirrors AOG’s.

We throw countless billions of pounds at other countries because they are too backwards for the present day:

Countries where people have lost their homes to adverse weather, when the homes were only made out of corrugated tin in the first place.
Countries where they have a massive HIV/AIDS problem, despite the fact that these days it is a preventable disease.
And countries where they have drought and famine, yet it doesn’t matter how hungry, weak and ill the population are, they still manage to breed and produce more people that need feeding.

AOG asks “do we throw money away or can we use it for better things in the UK”. (post at 13.26).
Well, how about spending it on protecting the environments that OUR people live in that are prone to inclement weather.
Or life saving/enhancing/prolonging drugs for OUR sick people who are denied them because they are too expensive.
Or housing and feeding OUR homeless.

[Svejk]

The best description of Foreign Aid, that I've seen, is;
A system for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

[sp1814]

Thanks douglas9401, but I would suggest that you ignore this thread if it bothers you. There's no point returning to this question if you have nothing of value to add.

AOG - foreign aid greases the wheels of international trade. It facilitates closer relationships and this is something that stands us in good stead when negotiating deals in future. It gets our foot in the door.

I tell you what really is a waste of money...the winter fuel allowance given to pensioners who live abroad in warm climates.

My money is going to these greedy pensioners and I will see zero return on it.

[sp1814]

Bighead

Some interesting points there.

Me...I'm happy for some of my money to go to developing countries.

The other 99.3% can stay here in the UK.

Out of interest - is there a figure for foreign aid and investment (that's what it should really be called) that you would be happy with?

Not expressed as a percentage, but as a figure?

[Svejk]

Douglas was right, in my opinion.
If Aid is some kind of giant slush fund, as you're now claiming, all the more reason for stopping it.
If you want to discuss pensioners, you should start another thread.

[Svejk]

Aid should be dispensed as and when needed where we can afford it. This nonsense Brown signed us up to is a farce.