Foreign aid is a source of corruption and dependency and my recommendation would be to end it all NOW
If I thought our overseas aid, in its current form, really alleviated misery and suffering I’d be all for it
PENNY MORDAUNT, the International Development Secretary, has asked the nation if we would like to “have a conversation” – about overseas aid. You’re not kidding, Penny.
Can I start the ball rolling? And maybe then you’d like to hear from a few readers. The people who can’t get beds in our hospitals, or a place for their kids in the local school. All the while that £14billion is being spent on fabulously berserk projects in the developing world.
To her total credit, Mordaunt has said that our current level of spending on overseas aid is unsustainable. It’s been rising every year. Due to a law passed by the coalition government, we have to spend 0.7 per cent of our income on aid to the Third World each year.
So right now we spend just under £14billion. And where does this money go? No less than 38 per cent of it is siphoned off to global outfits like that most useless of organisations, the United Nations.
This is the body which sent out some dimbo Australian envoy to tick off our Government about economic policy. An organisation which elected Saudi Arabia on to its Women’s Rights Commission. An anti-Western and rabidly anti-Israeli convocation of leftie Third World thugs with chips on their shoulders.
The world would be enormously improved if the UN was shut down tomorrow. And the rest of it? Some of the stuff you wouldn’t believe. A total of £792,000 went to a project investigating Tibetan verbs. Nope, not kidding.
I would assume that “climb” was one of the verbs they were investigating. They use that a lot, over there. Thanks to our overseas aid, someone, somewhere is now able to say in Tibetan: “F*** me, is that a yeti? Run away!”
Then there’s the £121,000 spent on a scheme to stop Indian schoolchildren imbibing sugary drinks. India itself gives overseas aid and has an income rather bigger than our own. Where is the point?
Another six-figure sum was spent persuading Chinese people not to smoke too much — China! The second richest country in the world.
Another one was to help Indian workers cool their workstations down — this in a country which has its own space programme, for Chrissakes. So much of our money is swallowed up by useless leftie quangos and charities to keep themselves in jobs.
Still more is pocketed by despots in the horrible countries they run. It is a source of corruption and dependency. It makes things worse. And when we tried to divert our overseas aid to some of the Caribbean countries stricken by hurricanes we were told we couldn’t — they were too rich!
It’s a nonsense and a racket. If I thought our overseas aid, in its current form, really alleviated misery and suffering I’d be all for it. That’s why I agreed with the last secretary of state, Priti Patel, who wanted to give a decent chunk to the Israel Defence Forces, which saves a lot of lives in Syria.
So my recommendation would be to end it all NOW. Divert the money into our beleaguered and creaking infrastructure. And when a tragedy occurs overseas — sure, splash the cash.
Anyway, Penny — hope I’ve helped by starting the conversation. Over to you, babes.
'Turd' is putting it mildly
SCOTTISH politician Ross Greer has already been called a “ginger turd” by Piers Morgan, and I don’t think I can improve on that. But it’s his ignorance and stupidity that staggers – rather than his hatred for Great Britain, which is something we’re used to from north of the border.
Greer described Winston Churchill as a white supremacist, a mass murderer and a racist, and likened him to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. He says he is simply challenging the “myth” of Churchill. No, Ross, you’re not.
You’re just pig ignorant, with a very poor grasp of history. Of course Churchill was racist. Just about everybody was of his age at that time.
If you can’t see the importance of Churchill to winning the Second World War – against REAL racists, REAL mass murderers – when Britain stood alone, then you lack all sense of context and proportion.
The more I think about it, the more I reckon “ginger turd” was an understatement.
Strife of Riley
HERO of the week is the excellent Rachel Riley, who has been speaking out against anti-Semitism. As a consequence, she now needs greater security when she’s doing TV’s Countdown. The left-wing Jew-hating trolls have been after her.
Rachel, said: “The more I speak, the more abuse I get, and the more abuse I get, the more I speak. It’s got to the point where I can’t look at my Twitter feed any more. It’s just a constant stream.”
She’s pretty clear who is behind it, too. A lot of the abuse comes from people who sign off with the hashtag JC4PM.
Kind of outrageous
SO, Labour MP Fiona Onasanya is off to prison. Found guilty in court of lying through her teeth.
But the remarkable thing is she’s still going to be paid as an MP while she’s inside. She has refused to resign her seat and so her £78,000 salary will continue to be paid by the rest of us.
If you got sent to the nick, do you think your employers would continue to pay your wages? You’d be out on your ear. It’s kind of outrageous, no?
Culture club's a big hit
THIS cultural appropriation business is getting out of hand. Marks & Spencer has been slammed by leftie nutters with nothing better to do with their time. For selling a biryani wrap.
They say it’s not authentic. Well of course it’s not bleedin’ authentic. This is the UK, not Mumbai. Singer Katy Perry was attacked for wearing a kimono because she isn’t Japanese.
White people in the US get criticised for wearing training shoes or sporting afros – that’s appropriating black culture, apparently. Though I think it was white folks who invented training shoes. Thing is, cultural appropriation is brilliant.
It’s the way we have of sharing our respective cultures. think it’s wonderful that countries outside Europe and the US have “culturally appropriated” democracy, sanitisation, railways, computers and so on. I wish more would do the same.
Message is clear
SOMALIA is the most corrupt country in the world, according to a list compiled by a group called Transparency International.
Not a great surprise, is it? Nor to see most of the rest of Africa hogging the bottom quarter of the world table.
It’s bad governance and corruption that is keeping Africa poor – not colonialism. You can tell that the compilers of the report are lefties, though.
Asked what countries were becoming more corrupt recently, they named the US, Hungary and Brazil. All three have elected right-wing governments.
Skirting the issue
A NEW study says that women who wear short skirts are more likely to be promoted.
The lesson I’d take from this, if I were a women, is to wear a short skirt to work. But I don’t think that’s the lesson they mean us to take.
I wonder if women who wear short skirts but have the legs of an obese elephant also are more likely to get promoted?
I think that’s the next study for those researchers at the University of Surrey.
Snow deal victory
I TOLD you last week that the reason we haven’t had a proper winter yet is that the people who run winter couldn’t agree on stuff.
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Such as whether it should be a hard winter, with lots of snow, no winter at all or a compromise deal with a backstop of some sleet for a bit.
But I understand that on Tuesday the President of Winter won an astonishing victory and was able to push her deal through.
Which was why it immediately snowed like hell.