General Chat

Good morning all...The British Virgin Islands can't get aid from the UK because they aren't on the Foreign Aid Programme....They have had to appeal to the rest of the world for help...
Why can't our Government look after our own people first,, then,,and only then,, give aid to all these other foreign countries??
All this stupid RED TAPE I find ridiculous..This is the 21st century after all...
My new local MP doesn't know why...Will she look into it?? I doubt it...
Other than that we have a bit of a damp morning here in Oxfordshire but let us all have a big collective smile ,, then the sun will show up again...It was a lovely day yesterday...I emptied the new summerhouse and clear varnished the floor..Should be much easier to wipe clean now.... :-D :-D :-D <3 <3 <3... LES...

The BVI govt has oodles of money derived from its large scale ultra confidential banking offer. Unfortunately the BVI is run by people who dont give a flying duck for the ordinary inhabitants. Dont hold yr breath waiting for HMG to bail out the bankers. Other islands with weaker links to the bankers will do a bit better.

The UK gives £300m in aid to Pakistan - despite Imran Khan saying in 2011, that all the aid does is fuel corruption - and Pakistan has a £19m space programme!

I'm off to see the youngest 'twig' in the family today - fingers crossed the trains are running :-D

It's not raining here at the moment - it's waiting until I leave the house :-(

The BVI qnd other Crozn possessions are not foreign although the HMG denies passport holdrs right of residence in the UK

The emergency funds should be granted either from the banking op (BVI) or general UK funding just like, say , the Isle of Wight or the Channel Is. NOT the foreign aid budget.

Why do we give foreign 'aid' (recently increased to Pakistan) when they're more interested in a rocket then their own?
Don't bother citing trade, as I won't believe it.
Where's the sense in bribing countries to trade with us?

They can't be given aid from the "foreign" aid budget because they are the BRITISH Virgin Islands. The aid would come from the same budget as a flood in Yorkshire, ie a domestic aid budget ( should there be one under this government!)

When the hurricane was known to be about to hit Dutch and French islands, THEIR governments put people and supplies on the ground before it hit....'we' waited till afterwards... which is typical isn't it?


Don't blame the conditions of the Foreign Aid Budget for this.

£19 million for a space programme doesn't seem much. Especially when you consider that London spent £1.8 million on a few fireworks in January.

If shared out among the population the £19 million would give them 10p each.

I've been to Tortola and Dominica - such poor islands, no infrastructure, nothing. UK should be ashamed of the state of the islands. I believe St Vincent is also British Territory, and that too is so poor.

Perhaps they should give less to the Foreign Aid Budget and keep more for British Aid.

If £19 million would give the population 10p each - and therefore it 'doesn't seem much'.
Why do we bother giving the country £300m, when it works out at only £1.57 each?

https://fullfact.org/economy/uk-spending-foreign-aid/

For those who don't read links

"Where does the money go? Only about 16% goes as humanitarian aid, or crisis relief, with the rest focused on strategic or long-term goals.

37% of the money goes via multilateral organisations, like the United Nations. The other 63% goes to programmes in specific countries as bilateral aid.

The five biggest recipients of bilateral aid are Pakistan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Syria. When it comes to continents, significantly more gets spent in Africa (55%) and Asia (41%) than anywhere else.

The Department for International Development (DfID) is responsible for most of the UK’s aid spending. They spend 81% of our ODA target; the rest is spent by other government departments and organisations."


As far as the top countries listed that receive the most aid, there are quite good reasons I think, eg most have been or are war zones, they need infrastructure, education, stability to make them ( hopefully) less of a threat to long term security ( for 'us' as well as them).


Quote from page "The 0.7% target has had a long history of opposition, most recently from people who argue that the money would be better spent on domestic priorities, like social care or defence spending.

But it’s hard to say whether we’re spending ‘too much’ just by looking at the numbers alone.

As an example: from one perspective, £12.1 billion is roughly four or five times one estimate for the shortfall in social care funding; but from another perspective, it’s a bit less per household than one estimate for the food we throw away."


It is easy to concentrate on the things none of us perhaps think tax payers money should go on ( and that applies to money spent here not just foreign aid) and forget some of the things it does, "An example would be the £230m the UK provided to fight the spread of Ebola in West Africa." kind of important that one? even if only as a selfish consideration :-)

or to put it another way, this rather diverting headline

"Britain spends almost as much on foreign aid as it does on Wales"

make what you will of that :-)