Many people in this country are concerned about the vast amounts of money funneled into “Overseas Aid.” Indeed there are even some, like myself, who would like to see this jamboree brought to a complete halt with the maxim charity begins at home in mind. HOWEVER, the BBC does not take such a line and is always keen to promulgate the idea that “Oversea Aid” is a good thing. On Today this morning we had an interview around 7.10am with World Bank’s new president Jim Yong Kim on the world’s richest countries’ promise to hand over 0.7% of their wealth every year to help the poorest – a target that David Cameron promises Britain will meet by 2015. Kim Yong explained how splashing vast amounts of our cash abroad was a sure sign of “leadership” and how if it were to stop that might mean some “young men” in unspecified areas might just end up going back to violence! Really? I wonder who these young men might be, exactly? Last time I checked those leading the global Jihad could not really get any angrier without exploding, and they do that anyway! It would be nice for the BBC to provide space to those who OPPOSE Foreign Aid. Instead it allows apologists for global extortion to come on and trot out asinine cliches without any challenge.
OVERSEAS AID STOPS THE JIHAD?
Bookmark the permalink.
What proportion of Saudi Arabia’s GDP goes to funding Jihad? Jihad is not expensive. The 9/11 gang were not “poor” – some had trained as pilots – a skill which would have earned them a good living anywhere in the world, had they not chosen the path of mass murder.
DFID is a civil service gravy train, and Cameron borrows money to give it away to polish his halo. Why do we have to put up with this pious nonsense? If anyone at the bBC really does believe it “does good” they can volunteer to pay a higher rate of tax. Oh, I forgot, some BBC staff use personal service companies to avoid tax…
When Bill Gates makes an announcement that he’ll be giving his OWN money as foreign aid, Cameron seems to think he’s just as saintly when he steps up after him and offers to give away OUR money.
As Norman Tebbitt said in a recent blog, foreign aid should come from the pockets of it’s multi-millionaire socialist proponents, such as Cameron, the Kinnocks, Blairs, Cleggs, Osborne etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01mw38x/ just listen in here 20 mins in.
bridie smith representing the 70% polled who are against overseas aid only last week! dishes it out
(if you can bear it to listen to scameron, and plaid cymru s excusery pap that is)
http://jeffersonian.therealgunguys.com/danegeld.html
The BBC clearly supports more foreign aid, so in the interests of balance they should invite someone not to support their view but to challenge it.
LBC radio has been broadcasting charitable appeals for the Air Ambulance, yet we have a ring-fenced and increasing foreign aid budget.
Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Let me be the first to state the obvious: even if you accept the idea of aid as Danegeld, that still doesn’t explain why we’re sending money to Brazil, China or Argentina.
Or India or Pakistan. The former has a space programme and both have nuclear weapons. The latter also has officials who can finance terrorists and assassins.
It was an article in the Telegraph by Oxfam’s director that got me wondering. The sanctimonious hectoring tone irked for a start, but then I felt concern that Oxfam was in Gaza at all, and subsequent realization that many of our most well known charities had been taken over by cultural Marxists.
A lifelong supporter of Oxfam, I cut all links with it, and got to wondering if aid actually does any good. I read this and this (2 articles) – none available at their original sites any more. The narrative goes against every “decent” compassionate instinct, yet (as others have noted) it is very hard to pick a single point in them that you can refute.
Human nature is perverse, and much of it is counter-intuitive. I remember hearing in a broadcast about education that the assessments of teachers of the likelihood of success of their pupils in life was 35% accurate. Think about that – random would be 50%, the teachers got far more wrong than right. The capacity of people to pick themselves up and sort themselves out is far greater than most of us can imagine, and it is often not improved by outside help.
Aid removes incentive, pride and self esteem – a consideration little thought of by the do-gooders, whose primary motivation is enhancing their own moral worth in the eyes of themselves and their peers. Is that compassion, or is it moral smugness?
I still contribute a lot to charity, but I am a great deal more careful about the causes I support.
Correction – second link should have been this.
“The Ten Can-nots” (1916) William Boetcker (some attributed to Abraham Lincoln):
“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
Charities: please note the last “can not”: You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
This is an article published nearly 30 years ago about the great economist Peter Bauer who demolished the oversea aid myth (that overseas aid eliminates poverty) not least in his 23 year career at the LSE (which, in those days, was not in the pocket of either Libyan dictators or AGW nutters).
I can’t but help think that overseas aid is a new type of quisling MOD budget. Part of it sweeteners for BAE Systems type defence contracts, part third-world warlord bribes but overall it’s just Danegeld as ado said earlier.
The UK government gave up on any serious national defence policy ages ago.
Since the BBC receives foreign aid it’s hardly likely to be impartial on the subject….
http://britain-today.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/climate-change-liars-international-bbc.html