Why Should Britain Continue To Give Foreign Aid?

by Chris Sabian⁽⁴¹⁾
Kute Fine Art

In the midst of the biggest-ever spending cuts in the history of Britain you would expect areas not to be affected by the cuts to be those that would most stimulate the UK economic recovery. Wrong - forget education or job-creating investment. Traditionally only two budgets are sacred: the NHS, and overseas aid. As of today it appears only foreign aid is sacrosanct.

There are those that say that the current plight in East Africa is just a recurring problem that will never go away so why should we keep sending aid that never gets put to a long term solution. I once read an analogy about the way to cure starvation in these places is to send fishing rods so that they can catch fish to eat. The problem is that the people break the fishing rods and use them for firewood to keep warm at night.

The plight of sub-Saharan Africa is an affront but to the British tax payer it seems ridiculous that social services, schools, housing and the rest should take higher-than-necessary cuts in order to protect the untouchable empire of the Department for International Development (DFID).

This is further compounded by some figures I read in an article in the Telegraph which showed where some of Britain's foreign aid £ goes.

£8.7 million in development aid to Singapore, whose gross domestic product per capita is the fourth highest in the world, and 46 per cent higher than our own.

£380,000 in aid to the enormously wealthy oil sheikhdom of Saudi Arabia.

Aid to Slovenia, Malta, the Czech Republic and Hungary, all highly developed First World countries, fellow members of the EU, and two of whom are even in the euro.

£40.2 million to China and over the past 10 years, even as India's economy has roared into overdrive, British development aid to the country has almost trebled. (2007/8, it was £312 million).

56 per cent of Britain's aid budget goes to Africa but even this is attracting criticism from numerous parties. There is a growing consensus that decades of international aid have often actually made things worse. Generally speaking poverty is caused not by nature but by bad government and with foreign aid programmes in force this has made governments less aware of the plight of their people.

We have a situation where the main effect of aid is not to help the poor – but to make rich people feel good about themselves. The aid budget is project niceness - enter David Cameron. Whereas Tony Blair's symbolic gesture was to go to war twice Cameron's is to protect the foreign aid budget. You might want to think about that one again Dave because I for one am getting a little pissed off about it.

Chris Sabian is a portrait artist with http://www.kutefineart.com and co-owner of http://www.paragonprints.co.uk

Article submitted Tuesday, August 02, 2011 & read 43 times.

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» left by Anonymous (189 days 11 hours ago.)

Due to the fact that Britain stole trillions during the reign of its empire and left the countries it "discovered" in poverty. I think the British government owes the rest of the world that much.
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