How on Earth can we expect India to fund an £800 million space exploration programme if we're going to start penny-pinching and not send them any more money after 2015?
Likewise, if we cut back on the river of cash flowing to Nigeria each year, how will they afford to let people know about their £251 million win in the Lagos State Lottery? Or that a long lost Auntie has unfortunately been involved in a plane crash and left them a fortune, which can be sent out after a small administration fee has been paid?
Still, at least we are boosting aid to Pakistan. Their defense budget rose by 10% this year and some of their nuclear reactors could really do with a bit of modernisation work. Maybe they'll be able to sell us some electricity once our lights start to go out?
It's no wonder Amazon, Ebay and Google don't want to pay taxes in our Country. They're just saving us from ourselves.
5 comments:
Daily mail rhetoric with no substance.
India still has a full 20% of the population living on 25p/day with a fair chunk of the population unable to afford a decent education.
Pakistan has serious problems, it's heading towards becoming a failed state and what happens if it collapses completely? Tactical nukes in the hands of Islamist nut jobs. Not an outcome anyone wants...
The aid to both amounts to around half a billion/year, most of the companies you specify are avoiding paying tax of multiple billions/year, they are stealing money from me and you, money that could be funding the NHS, the cancelled schools rebuilding/renovation programme etc.
But surely the fact that those circumstances exist is a reason for thier own government to address the problem, not ours? If they can build space rockets and nuclear bombs then they can spend some money helping their poor
Hideki,
You seem to be suggesting we maintain aid to India because the largest democracy in the world, a country that elected a woman prime minister decades before we did, can organise a space programme and a nuclear weapons development programme but can't run itself properly, and specifically that it's our job to intervene.
You also seem to be suggesting that aid to Pakistan should continue because there might be violence if it does not - so it's not aid, it's protection money.
Tactical nukes which, crucially, lack a long range international delivery system in the hands of Islamist nutjobs thousands of miles away actually sounds quite a good thing to me. Realistic results include
(a) they don't use them, and their neighbours (also nuclear armed) crush them conventionally or
(b) they start to begin to look slightly as though they might possibly at some point in the future consider making moves to talk about having a meeting to decide whether they should discuss using them, at which point the US will reduce the country to a pool of radioactive slag. Result.
Hideki, India and Pakistan can spend their money on space programmes and nuclear weapons precisely because they know that the rest of the World will pick up the tab for feeding their poor.
They simply don't give a monkey's about them.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Our Foreign Aid Department (DFID) sends taxpayers money to dozens of countries who don't care about the problems in their own backyards.
Brussels does exactly the same on a larger scale.
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