Sorry Dave, Charity Should Begin At Home

I always thought we had things wrong in this country with the levels of foreign aid handouts we give to other countries, but this week’s report declaring we don’t even know where it’s going takes the biscuit!

The recklessness of maintaining every pound of our overseas aid budget while other ‘home’ departments are cut to within inches of their lives has been proved.

I’ve always held the opinion that too much of our cash intended to feed the World’s starving end up in the wrong hands, but now a report by MPs has revealed this wonderful, generous Government of ours can’t even be bothered to check the money is getting to the intended recipients.

Britain gives £4.9BILLION which is 60% of our aid (incidentally one of the highest levels in the World) through agencies such as, the World Bank, European Union and United Nations who then decide how to use the money. Well it seems that only FOUR out of THIRTY NINE of these aid agencies have been monitored to make sure us taxpayers are getting value for money. 

I can only draw one conclusion from this which is the simple fact that we don’t care where our precious money goes! If we were giving it away for genuine, humanitarian reasons we’d take plenty of care to make sure it got there. Which means we’re giving it away purely for vanity, to make the current Government look generous both to its voters and to the World in general – and that I’m afraid is just not acceptable.

So How Much Do We Give Away ?

Well these are the Foreign Aid budget figures for this Government:

2011/12                £8.55 Billion

2012/13                £8.81 Billion

2013/14                £11.56 Billion

2014/15                £12.16 Billion

To put that into context, this year’s figures amount to 0.7% of our National Income, this has risen from 0.56% in 2011.   

Considering the cuts that are still being forced on this country, these outlandish sums of money going abroad to countries - some that have their own space program, is just ridiculous. Going off this week’s report it seems to be entirely because Cameron wants to look good on the World Stage, just as his predecessor Tony Blair did.

It’s time his MP's either make him change course not only on this but the EU and a lot of other things as well or get rid of him, this country of ours can’t afford Cameron and his inflated ego. Is it any wonder traditional, lifelong Conservative members are defecting to UKIP in droves?

Why are we’re doing it and Why us ?

They claim that Foreign Aid leads to improved future trade and benefits the UK economy. We should remember the years of aid given to India in the expectation that we’d sell them Typhoon fighter jets, but then when it came down to it the contract went to the French.

They claim it’s a moral issue. Really? Why are we giving up to £12 billion in 2014-15 when the likes of Russia and particularly the USA are giving so much less? The example we are trying to set is not being followed by any of the other super powers. So is it just a shameless bribe to get third world business?

They say we should be wary of what happens in the likes of Somalia, Syria or Sierra Leone. Well ask the average man/woman in the street what they think about Somalia and you`ll no doubt get either derision or a mouthful of abuse about thieves, deadbeats and pirates! Cameron is so far out of touch it`s getting silly and the longer it continues the more he looks the incompetent fool.

To continuously give our money away annually when we are on the verge of bankruptcy is scandalous. In addition to give money to rich, developed countries like India, China, Brazil etc is out of order and should stop immediately.

Britain's aid commitments make us the 'soft touch' of the international community. Add to that our immigration policy, plus the human rights issues; it makes us the laughing stock of the world. We have lost all semblance of common sense in this country.

Why are we borrowing the morning to give it away ?

To make matters even worse, we’re still borrowing money for all this.

But this is all about personal kudos at the top table; the elite running this country don't care about the rest of us. How much is it costing us to borrow £12 billion every year? How stupid is it? If we had money in the bank that’s fine, but to mortgage our country's future by borrowing huge sums from the International Money lenders to give away while our own services crash-dive is lunacy.

You know what makes me laugh is that when these morons in the government (and Labour for that matter) talk about debt and how we as individuals racked up too much debt living beyond our means, getting loans to pursue a lifestyle we couldn’t afford, then they go and do the very same thing.

We should not be borrowing money to give it away. Foreign aid is a luxury that we can no longer afford. It’s no different to me going out and giving £100 to charity from a credit card that I can't afford the repayments on.

When you are in a hole the first rule is stop digging. When you are broke the first rule is to stop borrowing. The second rule should be to stop giving away the money you have borrowed!

The Empire’s Long Gone

Some of these basket case nations we provide aid to were once part of the "British Empire", but they didn’t want that, they wanted their independence and that means that not only are they politically independent of the old "Mother country" but they now need to be after 40 to 50 plus years economically independent too. The begging bowl is near to being empty. It's time to stop feeling guilty for things our forebears did, which by the standards of the day were acceptable.

There’s an argument about monies going as aid following major disasters and that has some validity, however in the actual event of a major disaster I believe that G8 nations and others should help equally.

Look after our own first !

In poor times, giving away our tax payers money is just wrong. I was always taught that charity should begin at home. We need to look after the people who have contributed to this country, the elderly who have paid their taxes all their lives and now struggle to pay heating bills and buy food.

We’ve got cancer patients being refused medication; children unable to walk refused operations to change their lives; the elderly having to sell their homes to pay for care; state pensioners dying from cold and hunger; parents queuing at food banks to feed their children; our NHS almost broke; our troops being made redundant and our emergency services being reduced, I could go on and on but this government still thinks it is better to either give our hard earned taxpayers money away or money we’ve borrowed (money that our great grandchildren will still be paying back) to other countries. All this just goes to show how little this Government thinks of the indigenous British people, preferring to make themselves look good instea

Armed Forces Cuts

Downsizing our armed forces whilst donating money so other countries can increase theirs and increase their nuclear programmes is just gross negligence. Why on earth should we cut our armed forces so dictators in other countries can buy weapons and gold taps with our money while starving their own people?

Stop the aid, withdraw from the EU and put all the money saved into reversing the cuts to our armed forces. Modernising our armed forces is a great investment opportunity, defence jobs, political clout on the world stage and the trickle down of business into private sector businesses such as BAE systems leads to more jobs, growth and more tax receipts.

In Summary

I had high hopes for Cameron after Blair and Brown, things had to get better, and instead we have more of the self promoting same.

What is Cameron and Gideon the boy-wonder attempting to prove with this aid policy? If it’s the impression we are a nation of giving and generosity I'm afraid they have failed, dolling out money to richer countries than us like India or Brazil is a waste and giving billions to countries with despotic regimes in the vain hope that some of it trickles past corrupt officials to the people that need it is desperate.

Britain has always been a generous country but we didn't expect huge job losses or food banks feeding our own or people committing suicide rather than lose their home. We have an out of touch leadership that despite public opinion just carries on regardless. Democracy shouldn't work like this

In my humble opinion we should now be stopping all foreign aid until we are truly able to afford it.