by Kevan Stafford
The Daily Express is to be congratulated for starting a petition addressed to the government to “end Britain’s foreign aid spending madness that sees billions of pounds sent overseas”. The newspaper has launched a ‘Stop The foreign Aid Madness’ crusade.
Prime Minister Theresa May, like her Tory predecessor David Cameron, is committing British taxpayers to spend 0.7% of the country’s gross national income on overseas aid, amounting to £13.3 billion last year, on projects around the world – whether taxpayers agree to such generous expenditure or not. And this at a time when our country is struggling to pay for our own essential health and social care, particularly for the elderly. Charity is recommended to begin at home. When we ourselves are comfortable and well provided for is a time to possibly feel generous to complete strangers. Britain’s contribution amounts to one seventh of total foreign aid and we donate twice as much as France.
Our wonderfully generous prime Minister (generous with other people’s money that is) has guaranteed foreign expenditure free from the cuts which she is happy to impose on other essential spending here at home. Whilst it is true that the United States, with a larger economy, donates more in foreign aid at £25 billion per year, that sum represents only 0.18% of their national income compared to our 0.7%.
The main countries which benefit from our largess are Pakistan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Syria, but also China and India which manage to afford their own space programmes and nuclear weapons. Britain scarcely checks on the effectiveness of its spending and much of the money is misspent and wasted. The anonymous mandarins in our Department of International Development maintain that:
“Global challenges like mass immigration, disease, terrorism and conflict have no respect for national borders. If we stand back from this fight we are not only abandoning our global responsibilities, we are allowing other countries’ problems to come closer to our shores”. This spurious argument was used to justify British attacks on insurgents in their own countries, when such attacks actually provoke terrorism here in Britain. We invite millions of young men from the third world into our country, bomb their relatives back home, then wonder why they hate us and attack us – mass immigration destroys social cohesion and conservation and is entirely misconceived and should be reversed.
We need to make foreign aid contributions voluntary, so that well-meaning but misguided left-wing Samaritans can waste their own cash and permit the rest of us to contribute to projects at home or to spend on our own families. The proposed solution is not ideal because some British money would still be sent abroad rather than being spent within the British economy. Helping finance the digging of water wells and toilets for people in far flung parts of the world infantilises them when, left to their own devices, they would be more likely to develop the admirable quality of self-sufficiency. We could instead provide friendly advice or repayable loans. It took us decades to repay American loans to fight the unnecessary World War II against Germany, which President Roosevelt was so keen for us to declare.
3
We should have a small ‘holding fund’ to contribute aid to foreign countries when natural disasters occur such as that terrible tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 BUT THAT IS ALL IT SHOULD BE. In general, the department for foreign aid should be tiny in size and the LEAST IMPORTANT one in government. This issue illustrates very starkly the CONServative Party’s descent into the most absurd forms of left-liberal globalism. Britain desperately needs a sensible, modern, credible and well-presented nationalist party.
Very well put INDEED. I wonder whether we should include the costs of Housing , unemployment benefit , Health Care and much else besides , that we spend on numerous People who wash up on our shores from abroad , WITHIN THE FOREIGN AID BUDGET as let’s face it they are from abroad it is just that we help them HERE as distinct from well , ABROAD !
It does create a culture of reinforcing dependency, which in the long term is a counterproductive measure, both for ourselves and the countries getting the crazy sums of money… so much of it is wasted…some as stated, on nations that have their own space programme! The Express does raise this issue on a regular basis, as well as the facilitated migrant invasion…however, it is likely to become part of the Trinity Mirror group soon, which as we all know, are no friends of Britain!
I may not be popular for saying this the best PM this Country has ever had was Thatcher certainly not Major Blair Brown Cameron or Mother Theresa Thatcher understood the national interests which She never grovelled to Brussels or Washington May could learn a thing or two from Thatcher as for Corbyn a traitor
WELL SAID ADAM , a long complicated debate on Mrs T will not really help us on our website , but you are right she had her good moments , standing up to the Reds and the E.U. superstate.
In my opinion, you now have to go back many decades now for a relatively sane PM of this country. To my mind, the last half-way decent PM was Neville Chamberlain whose appeasement policies didn’t sadly work in the end but whose purpose in enacting them was to be pro-British and to put our national interests first. Thatcher wasn’t that good really. Her excessively liberal and hence globalist economic policies wrecked our remaining industrial base and her ultra-individualist ‘libertarian’ beliefs gave rise to the surfeit of political correctness we suffer from today. I would remind you Thatcher’s government also passed the Public Order Act of 1986 and from that point onwards having a sensible discussion about immigration and its effects became very difficult without attracting the charge of ‘racism’ and getting criminal charges brought against you.
Mrs Thatcher DID grovel to both the USA (especially) and to the EU. Indeed, her beloved idea of the Single Market which she thought was a ‘contribution’ to the EU is responsible for us not making progress on getting out of the EU. She only became a ‘Eurosceptic’ belatedly after realising her previous stupidity on the subject. Enoch Powell was right WELL BEFORE she was.
The only good thing she did do was to retake the Falkland Islands after they had been invaded but then again if her government hadn’t proposed slashing the Royal Navy to the bone in 1980/1981 and withdrawing the ice patrol ship that regularly sailed around the islands to act as a deterrent to an Argentine invasion perhaps the Argentine junta wouldn’t have invaded them in the first place.
Despite her nationalist image, Mrs Thatcher in her economic polices certainly was a liberal!
We need a Government that is not the corrupt Lib-Lab-Con America has Trump although a Republican is loathed by the GOP but is not a globalist