fast bloke

The slash spending review allows an additional 37% for foreign aid. WTF...... make it zero. We are sending aid to Brazil, who will soon be richer than us. Welfare reform..... go down the paid tout route. You tout on a lazy **** and you get their benefits for 3 months if they get found out. Once you are caught cheating benefits, you never get another penny, ever..... (and scrap that human rights tripe where you get benefits for people you once met before you came here to scrounge off me!!!!!!!!!!! )

Felix.

We give aid to Pakistan who have their own space programme...

Mrfastbaz

4 billion pounds would pay for a lot of schools being refurbed and at least this would give our own people some benefit why give it away when we really are a poor country nowadays....... spend it on the police army etc but not overseas aid.......last time i vote tory. i understand we are in a financial mess casued by years of spend spend spend but if we are cutting home services such as armed forces, police etc then surely foreign aid should be stopped totally not increased .by 37 % get a grip cameron understand the peoples views ..

GlesgaKiss

Should be zero as you say. If nothing else then on principle. Why is it the government's business to contribute our money to charity??!

hodgy0_2

what we give in aid we get back (billions and billions over) in arms sales

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Have to say I was bewildered by this yesterday. Here we are cutting this , that and the next thing and there is an increase in overseas aid. Yet as usual no one bothers to question the muppet as to why.

madscoob

iTrader: (3)

didnt know we made the ak47 . pakistan is full of them they can be bought for 100dollars

Petem95

AK47 is a Russian designed/made gun - hence the name, the designers initials and the year it was designed .. 1947.

There are likely to be good reasons why we're continuing to supply aid - as suggested arms sales etc, but obviously the government would never admit to this.

DCI Gene Hunt

The AK is made under license, like a MacDonald's franchise, but less deadly.

tony de wonderful

Yeah it creates a bit of bon ami.

The Zohan

And nuclear program as well yet they cannot cope with flooding. Money being spent in the wrong places i guess.

I do believe we should stop overseas aid until we are in a better financial situation. We are still borrowing money and we have yearly interest payments of 44bn yet we still give money away to other countries when we look to reduce spending in the NHS, Schools, Police, armed forces etc.

This makes no sense.

and for those who say we are only sending 120m to x y or z - it is our 120m and better spent in the UK at the moment - let overseas aid resume when we are not in debt!

urban

iTrader: (1)

Indeed - **** foreign aid and another one
Why have the government managed to "ring fence" 9 billion of government funding for those stupid olympics

And while I'm on a roll - roadsweepers that are deployed for cleaning up leaves.
Why can't prisioners be made to do some work - surely we can tag a con and make him or her this instead thus making more savings?

Leslie

But if we don't give out foreign aid, much of which goes in nefarious directions,our politicians won't get the fawning respect from other countries' politicians which they feel they so richly deserve!

Be fair!!

Les

jonc

Foreign aid is more than just about being charitable. As well as it being an obligation for rich countries to help poorer countries, it is used to keep some of these countries receiving aid to give our country extra leverage with foreign trade agreements, co-operation of these foreign governments and to keep these countries on our side. Pakistan for example are a nuclear power and are assisting with reducing the export of terrorist to our shores.

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

Unfortunately we are just a 3rd world Country with 1st world aspirations. The NHS that was set up to treat 20 million people now has to teat over 60 million and I doubt it will be able to carry on in it's present from overe the next 20 years.

Petem95

The NHS should be scrapped IMO. Why kid ourselves that we can afford it? With more older people and less working age people it's going to cost more and more, yet at the same time we'll have less and less to fund it with. Need an American style insurance system.

The budget deficit of this country is so big that even if we scrapped the NHS, the Army, Navy and Air Force and all other defence programmes we'd still have a £5billion deficit, and that's before taking into account the increases on social services with all those people being laid off..

hodgy0_2

have you seen the state of US health care

urban

iTrader: (1)

Yes I have seen the state of yankee health care - pay or die

You're having a heart attack sir - which pocket is your credit card in again?

David Lock

Exactly.

If we are nice to the people of Pakistan for example and give their useless President a few sandwiches at Buck House then maybe they won't let those nasty old Taliban borrow their nukes and send one in our direction.

Anyway I don't mind a tiny proportion of our money going to stop a kid dieing of malnutrition. Kids don't die of starvation n the UK.

I'd prefer to compare the aid budget with the cost of building a white elephant aircraft carrier or wasting big bucks on a war in Afghanistan that we haven't a snowball's chance of winning.

dl

hodgy0_2

I thing that 40% of all personal bankruptcies in the US are Medical cost related

that will include people with health insurance

Petem95

But the alternative is have the country go bankrupt instead. I think medical emergancies should be paid for by the tax-payer, but anything else should be covered by insurance.

Ok I admit poorer people will suffer, but I fail to see how it can go any other way. NHS costs are going to rise and rise, and funding will get tighter and tighter.

Don't get me wrong I think the NHS is a great thing, but the costs are just massive and the money has to come from somewhere if it's going to continue.

Martin2005

Yeah maybe we should ask the sick and the starving to stop dying until we have resolved our budget deficit

I think if Britain wants to continue playing a key role in the world we have to get the balance of 'soft' and 'hard' power right. Clearly overseas aid is a key part of our 'soft' power.

The Zohan

Or perhaps the 3rd world governments can stop spending the money on AK47's machetes and nuclear power and spend it on their people instead!

We do not and cannot afford to fund the rest of the world when we are in a real state ourselves.

People die fact! we cannot save everybody all of the time nor should we feel we should have to or guilty that we cannot.

Once in a better situation we should help out as we can but not until then!

If we need to keep 'bribing' countries which is really what you mean by your PC expression 'soft' payments then they are neither our friends or someone we should gift money to!

Martin2005

Thanks for the unfair characterisation of my views (apprieciated as always). I don't see this a bribery at all, it an essential part of our soft power, if we want to influence outcomes in our national interest then there will always be a price on that.

Ultimately I believe that the money spend of foreign aid should be seen more as an investment than a spend, if used wisely it will reap rewards in terms of trade, economic growth and hopefully help prevent us having to use 'hard' power in future (which is exponentially more expensive to deploy)

Anyways the world isn't going to go away, it's shrinking and we are becoming increasingly inter-dependent

Good discussion though


PS god knows what's happened to the formatting of this post

urban

iTrader: (1)

I spent 3 months working in Tanzania and the amount of corruptness in the government was uinbelievable.
They were spending money hand over fist.
For example - I was working and was asked to review some IT hardware & software invoices

They had payed an invoice from a company for a server which costs the equivalent of almost 70K GBP!
This server was specced at no more than 10K!
I received a quotation for an additional hard disc - they wanted 11K for that, despite the machine already having an additional unconfigured disc from the original spec!

I discovered just over £850K GPB of fradulent invoices in that 1 government department alone.
A women linked to a senior government official in the "finance" department owned the hardware company.
They were also charging 25K a year maintenance




We should look after our own first and foremost.

The Zohan

We give 2.9bn in unilateral aid each year hardly chicken feed by any measure. that would be 2.9bn less in cuts or more to pay of the debts - money better spent on the and for the people of this country surely...???

We gave china 40m last year - now there is a poor and needy country who has nothing - 40million! WHY???

Martin - how can you keep 'invest' (your words) and keep investing money you have borrowed which you cannot afford - money that pushed you further into debt - money you have to borrow.

as a hypothetical example - I would love to invest in a few things that in the long term would be good for my family but unfortunately i haven't the money to so i won't - common sense really.

Not too sure how you define it as an investment anyhow - the aid money is gifted and not a loan and i am not too sure how exactly it is an investment to the benefit of the people of this country - after all it is their money being given.

As i said we should help when we are in a position to - the overseas aid money is ring-fenced to the detriment of vital services in this country and that is madness - IMHO

Martin2005

Corruption is obviously a massive issue, and the government needs to only spend the budget and projects that they know are not steeped in fraud and illegality.

PS we do 'look after our own' overseas aid is 1% of GDP, demonstrably it is a tiny % of government spending

Martin2005

If we don't end up going to war in those countries then it's an investment, if we help develop the economy of that country it's an investment,as they will trade more and more as they start to prosper. That's is a simply as I can put it.

Also I sense a lack of consistency on your part, I thought this was about making our public sector more efficient, cutting bureaucracy and waste
and removing people who defraud the system from welfare, not cutting vital services? Are you now saying that the previous government got it right and those nasty old Tories are dismantling it all?

hodgy0_2

I think the figures show that the US system is even more expensive that the NHS

maybe the French system is better?