Telegraph.
Justine Greening, who took on the post of Development Secretary last month, said she wants to see Britains's links to richer developing nations become about business, rather than hand-outs.This is the same aid budget that will rise to £14.5 billion by the year 2014.
The Minister is under pressure to get better value for money from Britain's £12 billion per year spending on countries including China and India, which has its own space programme.
Speaking at the Tory Party conference in Birmingham, Ms Greening signalled India will be a target for cuts.
"We should recognise that as countries get richer, we need to be responsible about how we transition in our relationship with them from aid to trade," she said.
"Those are the discussions that I am having with the Indian government at the moment."
I really fail to see why we're in discussions with the Indian government, they didn't by our products (Jet fighters) yet are still sucking at the teat of our aid packages. Perhaps we should be more like the USA and state that aid comes at a price, you buy our stuff, we
I really don't know where the Tories got the idea from that ring fencing and even expanding the foreign aid budget was a good idea. Perhaps it was simply an attempt to move away from the 'nasty party' tag that the hard of thinking on the left seem to have stuck them with. After all, it appears to make common sense to me that what socialists believe to be worth spending on should be subject to extreme scrutiny as it's probably funding something detrimental to the country as a whole. After all that's where the inefficiencies in the NHS come from, the use of full time union reps paid for by the taxpayers, the complex benefits system which has moved from a safety net to somewhere a person can live comfortably for the rest of their lives (in some cases) because taking on a job leaves them worse off. To the foreign aid budget which funds kleptocracies in Africa and nuclear powers in Asia.
There is so much this (or any) government could have done to reduce the cost of the state to the taxpayer. Yet year in year out costs (and government) increases.
Yet still some people out there keep voting for them.
That I believe is where we have to start changing things, so long as the political parties continue to take our votes for granted, the more they take advantage of us.
This more than anything else needs to stop, and only we can do that...
3 annotations:
The richest nations of the world are in the G20. The very richest nations of the world are in the G8.
To be in the G8 you need to demonstrate your richness by giving some of it away.
Never mind that people are living on the street, kids are hungry, pensioners die in the winter from cold related illness. Sorting out their problems doesn't buy you a seat at the top table with Mr Obama and Mr Hu.
So, because our prime ministers are far more interesting in bigging themselves up and their "place in history" than they are in the fact that the country is falling apart, they will quite happily send a person with cancer, on chemotherapy, to look for a job, but if they can give a very rich nation (which has asked, nay begged the Uk to stop giving it aid) a few million, that's a bit closer to getting in the photocall with the big cheeses.
Call me Dave is preparing the ground for his new career on the world-wide lecture circuit. Obviously there will not be much money to be made in Burkino-Faso or South Sudan but India and China? That is where the real new money is.
End aid now. Simples.
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