If you are feeling the pinch, consider this: a report released at the G8 summit reveals the British contribution to foreign aid in the year 2011-2012 will be £8.7bn, rising to more than £12bn in 2014. Some people feel good that we give away so much of our money, some so not so good. However, I suspect a few attitudes might change on learning the UK spends more on aid as a percentage of national income than ANY other country in the world. The UK is contributing EXACTLY TWICE AS MUCH on foreign aid as a share of its Gross Domestic Product as the G8 average for the world’s leading economies.
So, while our local authorities are cutting back trying to save millions to our detriment, the government is every year giving away many billions in excess of what many will consider to be our fair share. When your local library, play centre, or what have you, disappears to the cuts, you can take heart in knowing, as just one example, you have helped to provide hundreds of millions of pounds to India, a country which spends billions on defence and has an enviable space programme. Look up, sweethearts. That little light flashing across the night sky could be your library!
We are told to help develop democracies, £110m of taxpayers’ money will be allocated to Egypt, Tunisia and Middle Eastern countries. David Cameron has said, on record, that he reckons this money will protect Britain’s national security interests.
Really? What like giving the playground bully your sweets? Is that how it works? Personally, I always used to hit him in the goolies, and that stopped his bullying!
I see our Apache helicopters will be upping the ante in Libya, but before anyone shouts “Geronimo!”, they might want to remember what happened to him and the Apache nation. Adopting David Cameron’s philosophy, perhaps we should have given Colonel Gaddafi a few more of our sweets, and then we might not be there now. Unless we are prepared to put boots on the ground in Libya, we might very well be giving him a few more anyway, should a crew survive one of those helicopters coming down near his troops. Though they possess terrifying firepower, the Apache helicopters are notably vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles, especially in built-up areas, and Libya is known to have adequate supplies, enough to inflict some painful wounds.
Doubtless the allies will prevail in the end, or at least come out of the skirmish under the (some will say: compromising) flag of “honourably”, as has happened in Iraq, and is being led up to in Afghanistan today. But I really don’t understand the Western approach when dealing with these foreign threats. We go in like ballet dancers with one hand strapped behind our backs, both causing and sustaining suffering and huge losses of human life, often over many years, when all the time we have the power to end the conflict straightaway. Yes, it would be with a massive loss of life too, but what’s the difference, apart from that we wouldn’t lose any of our own? Such one hit solutions come cheaper too. In this dispute alone, we have already spent on missiles far in excess of the cost of a one hit solution.
Perhaps what we need is a United Nations that really works and has some guts? One where the democratic decision it arrives at in a dispute is final, and with no doubt left in anyone’s mind its solution WILL be imposed! Such would save untold human lives, and leave us all with the money to enjoy a better lifestyle.
Of course, anything like that is unlikely to come to fruition in the near future. Undoubtedly, it would curtail too many of the West’s unscrupulous actions around the world, where often we are seen as the bully.
