Viewing 35 posts - 1 through 35 (of 35 total)
  • so then, all you grumpy, malcontented tax complainers….
  • yunki
    Free Member

    how does it sit with you that our foreign aid policy costs each taxpayer £400 a year..?

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    Doesn’t that rather depend which parts of the “foreign aid policy” we are talking about?

    Does it bother me that some of my tax money goes to help the world’s poorest people and countries suffering from natural disasters? No.

    Does it bother me that some “foreign aid” has less altruistic hidden (and not so hidden) agendas or may be misappropriated by corrupt governments etc? Yes.

    (£400 sounds like a lot though. Where is that figure from?)

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    Be interested as to how much of that £400 comes back in the country as it is tied to buying goods or service from UK providers?

    plus:

    What GrahamS said.

    Why we give aid to India is beyond me. They spend more on their space program than we give them in aid.

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    mcboo
    Free Member

    We ought to be dropping trade barriers to Thirld World exporters, not spraying the aid industry with cash that pays for Western NGO workers houses in the Kenyan sunshine.

    druidh
    Free Member

    £400 doesn’t seem like very much if it’s going to the right places.

    titusrider
    Free Member

    Mcboo +1

    titusrider
    (ecomonics degree with a focus on development economics)

    binners
    Full Member

    It does concern me that we’re giving aid to countries with advanced nuclear weapons programmes. They don’t tend to be the kind of thing you can knock up on the cheap in your garage

    Agree completely about doing away with ridiculously prohibitive trade tariffs, instead of spraying them scatter-gun with aid, would do considerably more good

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    By the way, the Institute for Fiscal Studies puts “Overseas Development Aid” figures (2010) at £275 per UK Taxpayer or £321 per household (£8.45 billion in total).

    http://www.ifs.org.uk/budgets/gb2012/12chap7.pdf

    (Obviously these are slightly meaningless averages but there you go)

    mcboo
    Free Member

    And if we really wanted to help these countries we would have a grown up approach to foreign students who want to come here. Genuine students who pay a healthy sume for the privilage, the very best of whom get leave to remain if they land jobs that cant be filled by domestic uni leavers. Most of them will eventually return to Asia or Africa with one can hope strong business and personal connections that can only benefit Britain.

    I’m definatly not talking about opening the doors to the world’s huddled masses, I’m saying we ought to be exporting our liberal culture through the next generation of business leaders.

    Oh and remember those aims of reducing child poverty and lifting xxxx million people out of absolute poverty that the aid industry used to shout about back in the 1990s? Well they have been reached and them some, and it was nothing to do with foreign aid, and everything to do with China and India throwing off decades of brain-dead state socialism and embracing liberal free markets.

    sparksmcguff
    Full Member

    Isn’t a good proportion of foreign aid really defense export guarantees or similar? (As wwaswas said).

    big_n_daft
    Free Member

    druidh – Member

    £400 doesn’t seem like very much if it’s going to the right places

    I imagine if they had to publish the details of all expediture over £1K (project or item) that we would get a better idea of what is being done with the aid

    mt
    Free Member

    Am more than happy to send my tax money to aid those that need it. Countries that spend loads on nuclear weapons, space programmes, No!

    I am also aware that some of these countries don’t give a monkeys about their own citizens, if we stopped helping then it would make no difference to those in power in the country. Could be a tough call.

    I see the money we send to the EU as miss spent foreign aid. That bill is much bigger.

    MSP
    Full Member

    It was more to do with the western markets ending their political dogma led trade sanctions than any internal changes in those countries.

    IMO 400 (or 275 whichever it really is) isn’t much at all.

    kimbers
    Full Member

    yup 300 quid per household according to newsnight

    which is 1p off every pound or something similar

    wl
    Free Member

    GrahamS +1
    And a bit of mcboo, although there are plenty of useful Western NGO workers who’ve made personal sacrifices to do difficult but important work in challenging conditions.

    marcus7
    Free Member

    On the radio this morning they were talking about this and i may be wrong but i’m sure they said that india has its own aid budget for poorer countries (may have misunderstood tbf) but if true it makes no sense.

    mcboo
    Free Member

    Talking of brain dead socialists

    It was more to do with the western markets ending their political dogma led trade sanctions than any internal changes in those countries.

    Course it was…..I mean the Chinese economy hasnt been revolutionised in the last 25years. Nope, nothing new in the way Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia operate their economies.

    Vietnam remains faithful to the true creed of Marxism and is still a total basket case.

    Mike-E
    Full Member

    Another sunny day in Monaco here 8)

    What Druidh said.

    MSP
    Full Member

    argh the strange world of Mcboo, earlier you were railing the importance of dropping trade barriers, as soon as its mentioned by someone you see as a socialist its straight in with the insults. No political dogma from you.

    unklehomered
    Free Member

    In simplistic terms, Fine. (i pay under average tax as I earn F All at the mo), but Aid to India is a bit odd, and I’m sure if the full budget breakdown there will be some bits that tabloid head line writers can get all irate about. Dare say some of it goes on things I don’t like. That bit can be fixed/altered, but it’s right we help people. The real debate should be on how we do that, spend the money to make a difference, not just address the syptoms etc.

    But then you weren’t asking me as I’m not a tax complainer. Happy to pay tax. Was happy to pay it when I was earning well, and am happy to pay it still now I’m not. Would never dream of avoiding it. One day I may want an ambulance to come quickly. Simple as.

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Income tax only accounts for about 1/6th (iirc) of the tax take so dividing the cost of something by taxpayers over inflates the cost to us. if foreign aid amounts to £300 per taxpayer then the actual cost to you or me (if we’re average) is more like £50

    Rio
    Full Member

    Income tax only accounts for about 1/6th (iirc) of the tax take

    Income tax and NI is about half the total tax receipt.

    Like others I’d be happy with £400 or more if I thought it was well used. I suspect however that much of it isn’t. Wasn’t India at some point asking us not to give them aid as they found it embarassing?

    br
    Free Member

    I imagine if they had to publish the details of all expediture over £1K (project or item) that we would get a better idea of what is being done with the aid

    and spend far more money auditing/collecting etc than actually give out…

    I once did a contract with a certain Govt department, that spent a million to establish where a million had been given…

    sbob
    Free Member

    For every £1.00 in tax collected by HMRC, 48p is used in the collection of said tax.
    Maybe it’s time we simplified matters…

    grum
    Free Member

    On the radio this morning they were talking about this and i may be wrong but i’m sure they said that india has its own aid budget for poorer countries (may have misunderstood tbf) but if true it makes no sense.

    It’s because to a great extent government foreign ‘aid’ is an instrument of foreign/trade policy, and not motivated by altruism (not to say that no good things are done).

    rudebwoy
    Free Member

    foreign aid , is anything but in most cases, as any who are aware know, its the end of a wedge called power

    loum
    Free Member

    It looks more like the Chinese are reaping the rewards of 60 years of their own hard work and long term planning, whilst the West suffers from the boom and bust of unregulated markets and short term profiteering. More bust than boom at present.
    China used their strengths to enter global markets on their own terms and look well set to become the dominant economy of the 21st century.
    And their education system now leads the world in science, maths and reading at under 16 level, with the next phase of their long term plan to dominate at university level in the same way. The funding’s there, and now the domestic base level of education too. So it doesn’t matter what doors we open to “huddled masses” or even privileged few, the demand for our University teaching is set for massive decline as the market will choses the the better product. The days of exporting imperialist capitallism/liberal culture are gone. New markets like Africa, S America and S Asia have better options now.

    mefty
    Free Member

    Isn’t a good proportion of foreign aid really defense export guarantees or similar? (As wwaswas said).

    No, ECGD (Export Credit Guarantee Department)comes under BIS (Cable’s lot) not DFID (Greening’s lot).

    rudebwoy
    Free Member

    it shows what can be done under state capitalism, and you are right loum, the balance of economic power has shifted, its part of the dialectic……we live in a declining economy, that is only going to get worse, there are some big shocks around the corner for some people, who think its just a ‘recession’

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    On the contrary loum/rudebwoy – a large part of the recent boom in China was the result of state de-regulation and liberalisation of large parts of the economy. However, one of the challenges still facing China now is how to evolve from a largely state driven infrastructure-driven economy to a domestic-demand/consumption driven one. Ironically, if you are talking about state capitalism, it is the lack of a welfare state that is one of the key reasons why domestic demand remains supressed and why the propensity to save in China is so high. Leading to severe imbalance in the domestic economy and the RoW.

    Anyway in explaining aid to us plebs, Andrew Mitchell stated that we were going to commit legally to a 1% of Nat Income in overseas aid and then:

    And he said there were plans to stamp British aid in future to show where it is from. It will feature a union jack and the words “UK aid, from the British people”.

    “It is important that all around the world, where British aid is saving and transforming lives, that the British public, the British taxpayer, gets the credit for this,” he said.

    He went on: “For under 1% of gross national income this is a tremendous investment, not only in the future stability and prosperity of some of the poorest and most dysfunctional parts of the world, it’s an investment for Britain in Britain’s future prosperity and stability and security.”

    June 2012 Andrew Marr programme

    mcboo
    Free Member

    It looks more like the Chinese are reaping the rewards of 60 years of their own hard work and long term planning

    That is quite a take on 20th Century Chinese history. All that shooting and starvation during the Cultural Revolution was just a culmination of the big plan. Yet they couldnt throw communism out fast enough once the dust had settled and get down to doing business.

    Nothing makes me more grateful to have been born in the West than what happened in China and Russia and the Eastern block during my lifetime.

    stumpyjon
    Full Member

    AS said above for me it is all about what the aid is used for and where. Nuclear states aside (and I agree wholeheartedly there) aid to keep people alive doesn’t make a lot of sense in the long term, many of the regions we give aid to are over populated / under resourced. Population expansion is still happening and it will get to the point where the aid is going to anywhere near enough to keep people alive.

    There’s good reasons why the popultions continue to rise, lack of education, political interference, high child mortality rates etc. Aid needs to go towards the countries able to make best long term use of it, those actively supporting family planning policies, immunisation programs, proper people driven infrastructure projects. These things will take the pressure off people and in time help to reduce birth rates and make the populations more sustainable.

    Pouring aid into disaster stricken areas is very humnaitarian at the time but only helps towards the next big disaster, targeted development money should be the priority, and then into countries able to use it properly, where it won’t end up in some politicians Swiss bankl account.

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    Logically I understand and agree with your points stumpyjon, but how do you/we turn round to a country and say “Nah we’re not going to help those starving children. Your population was too high anyway.”

    That callous logic makes sense, but I hope it will never be used.

    Junkyard
    Free Member

    aid to keep people alive doesn’t make a lot of sense in the long term

    I disagree massively – how can you let people die when we have the money and resources to save them? How can this not make sense? Why not let our own ill die does that not make as much sense?

    , many of the regions we give aid to are over populated / under resourced. Population expansion is still happening and it will get to the point where the aid is going to anywhere near enough to keep people alive.

    might do it might not but the issue currently is about the iniquitous owning of resources[ food, money, healthcare, clean water] which is down to a capitalist system or some keeping more than them – it has not cured poverty whatever the supporters on here claim
    We could end it [largely] if we gave a shit

    stumpyjon
    Full Member

    We could end it [largely] if we gave a shit

    Not going to happen until the human race matures rather a lot, we’re still basically hoarders. It’s a really difficult question, do you look at the current human cost at an individual level (which it is hard not to do) or do you try and take the longer view that even if you help people now even more are going to suffer in the long term. Callous? Probably, but sometimes the world doesn’t work (including the human population) doesn’t work the way we would like and there’s not much we can do about it.

Viewing 35 posts - 1 through 35 (of 35 total)

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