The late great science fiction writer Brian Aldiss wrote a story where a jaded millionaire used an employee to rev up his system by giving him a “hate brace.” This was an experience which created anger, fury, an adrenalin rush and a reason for going on living. Anger can do that.
Prepare yourself for a hate brace.
The Department for International Aid recently released a press statement, which it seems to believe exonerates it from the accusation that the UK is giving money to a country which has its own space programme. The logic is curious. Let me quote the release:
“The UK no longer gives any money to the Government of India. More than half of the projected £98 million will be invested in Indian enterprises, while the rest funds technical expertise. Together these help develop new markets, whist creating jobs for some of India’s poorest and marginalised people.”
Got that? Because the money doesn’t go directly to the Indian government it somehow doesn’t count, so we are no longer allowed to mention their upcoming moon shot. DFID taxes poor people in the UK and then scores compassion points by giving it away. Damn our potholes, damn our closed libraries, damn the poor in this country, someone in Whitehall can go to bed each night in a warm glow of smugness having given away someone else’s money. Our money. Damn them. Feel that hate brace burn!
It would be possible to cut overseas aid to zero but that would be inhumane and, more to the point, it might not be in our own interests. Sometimes there is a need for emergency aid, sometimes there is an unanswerable case of enlightened self-interest. For example, it may be possible to break the bird/pig/human cycle that breeds the flu virus, the cycle that one day will unleash a devastating pandemic on the world. Will unleash, note, it’s certain, it’s just a matter of time. Aid to laboratories all over the world to genetically engineer local pig varieties without a receptor for the virus is good for everyone, especially those like us who live in one of the most crowded countries in the world. I’m sure that you can think of other examples. It is past time that the colonial mindset of Whitehall was broken: it is not the place of the UK to condescend to poor benighted natives, these are sophisticated and successful people in immense and powerful countries with their own priorities and their own agendas. For HMG to give them aid is an insult.
Let’s cut overseas aid to £3,000,000,000. Still a substantial amount, still enough to help those in dire need, but doing so would free up well over £10,000,000,000 to spend on our own poor, our own technical expertise, to develop our own enterprises.
There are those who will feel that by refusing to help we are not being a proper citizen of the world, not pulling our international weight. OK, let’s solve that problem. At the same time as the aid budget is cut, let us set up a bank account run by HMG which accepts charitable donations and which sends the money raised to deserving causes overseas. My preferred distribution system would be to give it to the Salvation Army, but that’s a detail which can be thrashed out later.
What’s not to like? Those who want to give can give. Those who don’t, and those who can’t afford to give, won’t. Brian was writing in the sixties and the idea of truly obscene wealth measured in billions or even trillions was unimaginable even for a man with his fertile imagination, but now we have many wealthy philanthropists who will no doubt step forward.
Best of all, we can fire hundreds of highly paid civil servants and get them out into the economy where their expertise will help regenerate our own enterprises and markets. I will watch their performance with great interest.
Re Indian space program. Why not team up with it to build our replacement for the EU galileo project, by which we have been first robbed then expelled.?
TWo reason – loads cheaper , and inherently more secure with our friends in the worlds biggest democracy than with a bunch of ex-commie gangster mini/micro states
How anyone who claims to be impoverised in this country can still vote Lib/Lab/Con/Green when all four parties support giving £13 billion per annum in foreign aid I really don’t know.
I am now 75 and it is my opinion that foreign aid given during my life time has just created millions more miserable near starving people particularly among the peoples of Africa. Had these people been left alone nature would have limited their procreation to what natural resources were available to them. Instead well meaning countries poured in food aid improving the health and well being of these people which everyone thought to be a good thing to do, but this enabled populations to grow so requiring more and more help to sustain the more and more people being born and surviving, but still living miserable often hungry lives. I just wonder whether we really helped?
Over 35 years ago, I was involved in a discussion group about the dangers of giving aid to African countries and it was the unanimous conclusion that aid is harmful to the population and corrupt in effect. This was communicated to the then British government who, as usual, insisted that they know best. A typical arrogant answer, however, since that time many reports of the harmful form of aid has been demonstrated, yet they (Gov) persist in implementing more harm, and that at the expense of poor people within the United Kingdom, could develop into productive members of society. We need a Brexit friendly government, so let us drain the swamp, and kick start a government we can all be proud of.
Only UKIP argues for the abolition of the Fixed%of GDP to go to Overseas ‘Bribes and Virtue Signalling’.
Hello Julian,
Brilliant ideas, both of them: the disaster relief fund and the charitable donation fund. This is the sort of thing which UKIP could profitably use in the coming elections.
Sonya
Julian. Overseas aid is not necessarily about helping others. It is all about distributing the wealth of the UK, being the 5th largest economy in the world. In the global socialist scheme of things it is unreasonable that we should be able to create such wealth while billions of people worldwide don’t have the opportunity to do so. So overseas aid then is all part of the plan of the United Nations and Common purpose and the EU to asset strip us, after all we obviously made a fortune by taking over other countries when we supposedly ruled the world. Why should we not feel guilty about it and start paying it all back.
so we know who run the un and we also see that they nevr appear very high high on the donating countries but are one of the worlds richest, we have a national debt which is a disgrace and are slling uk assets to pay the interest.I think Julians ideas are a winner
“after all we obviously made a fortune by taking over other countries when we supposedly ruled the world.”
Wrong . The people at the top and the elites with huge bank accounts, big estates made their fortunes. The remainder died as canon fodder or lived in misery at home.
Also although they want to redistribute wealth of the common people an extremely small number of people world wide have all of the wealth.
And India is the 6th largest economy in the world; perhaps it should redistributing it’s wealth more evenly!
Better to cut overseas aid altogether and create a disaster relief fund to provide emergency assistance as necessary. Continuing the present system does little or nothing to help those really in need as the money doesn’t go directly to them, allowing corrupt individuals to have an easy life on the back of it.
I do like the idea of getting rid of civil servants although not sure if their type of expertise would be of much benefit, but I guess your comment was tongue-in-cheek.