Sometimes one finds out things in the House of Lords

Lord Stoddart of Swindon has been busy again (and a good thing, too). He asked HMG

what was the value of United Kingdom overseas aid administered by the European Union in 2013; and what they expect the figure to be in 2014.

This blog would argue that it matters little who administers overseas aid as it is likely to lead to waste and corruption in any case and is unlikely to lead to economic development. But I digress.

HMG in the shape of Baroness Northover replied:

In 2013, the UK share of official development assistance funded from the EU budget was £813 million. UK’s contribution to the European Development Fund (EDF), a Member States voluntary fund not financed from the EU budget but also administered by the Commission, was £407 million. Estimates for the UK share of official development assistance funded from the EU budget in 2014 will be published in April 2015 as part of the provisional ODA: GNI statistics publication for 2014. The UK’s contribution to the EDF in 2014 is currently estimated to be £328 million.

That is quite a lot of money that is wasted or used to shore up corrupt and oppressive governments and organizations. Let us not forget that the UK gives money to these directly as well as through the EU and through the UN. So, we give overseas aid several times over.

One of the organizations we give aid to directly as well as part of the EU is the unspeakable UNRWA, whose purpose is to keep Palestinians in refugee camps and refugee status. It so happens that I went to a presentation on the subject a couple of days ago and intend to write about it in detail quite soon.

Back to Lord Stoddart. He also asked:

whether they will now answer the question originally asked namely, “whether they will consider recommending withdrawal from the European Union if their objectives cannot be met through negotiations”.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns replied:

The Government’s position remains the same: the European Union must reform to become more competitive, democratically accountable and fair for those inside and outside the Eurozone. The need for reform is widely acknowledged amongst the EU Institutions and other Member States.

The UK’s membership of the EU brings many benefits to the UK, including jobs and investment; a strong collective voice to negotiate free trade agreements; and greater international influence on global threats such as climate change and Ebola.

This was demonstrated at the recent European Council last October where EU leaders agreed to the 2030 climate and energy policy framework—the world’s most ambitious targets so far—as well as agreeing to increase EU financial help to fight Ebola to €1 billion.

I take it that is a no.

Distracting attention

The egregious Godfrey Bloom, UKIP MEP for Yorkshire has been in the news again. For the benefit of those readers who do not find the minutiae of British politics absorbingly interesting I had better explain that Mr Bloom, who has a track record of making offensive comments though he thinks of them as intelligent and amusing, said at a meeting in Wordsley, West Midlands

How we can possibly be giving £1bn a month, when we're in this sort of debt, to Bongo Bongo Land is completely beyond me.

Some of the money had gone on buying "Ray-Ban sunglasses, apartments in Paris, Ferraris and all the rest of it.

He has since explained that he is sorry if he caused offence and will not do it again. In fact, he has promised the Dear Leader that he would never use the expression Bongo Bongo Land again.

Too late. Or maybe not. All day we have had the Grauniad and the Conservative Party getting all worked up about the racism of Godfrey Bloom and UKIP while others have been getting worked up about the PC attitude of our media. Why shouldn't Mr Bloom say Bongo Bongo Land even if he is not talking about Cliff Richard's highly successful film?

The question should be what possessed Mr Bloom to phrase what is a perfectly sensible question in that ridiculous fashion. Oh, I was told, he is a Yorkshireman and he calls it as he sees it. Does he, indeed? I have lived in Yorkshire and what I remember is people being friendly, pleasant and polite.

What he has achieved is to divert attention yet again from the subject of foreign aid and its sheer wrongness to the question of whether UKIP is racist (some and some) and whether Godfrey Bloom should go on being and MEP (why on earth not?) and other suchlike fascinating subjects.

Valiant rearguard action was fought by James Delingpole, who wrote quite correctly:

If anyone has a problem with the factual basis of Bloom's argument, let them speak up now. I'd be truly fascinated to hear them make the case that – contra Jonathan Foreman's bravura demolition of the foreign aid industry Aiding And Abetting (Civitas) – our ringfenced foreign aid budget is anything more than a massively wasteful exercise in post-imperial arrogance, moral grandstanding and self-delusion. I'm also mad keen to hear them explain how – contrary to all evidence – standards of governance, transparency and moral compunction in failing African states are every bit as high as they are in the UK. And if they are unable to do this then the case against Godfrey Bloom is risibly weak. It depends entirely on the immeasurably trivial semantic significance of his use of the phrase "Bongo Bongo Land".

But it was Mr Bloom who diverted attention from his case (badly stated) to the semantic problem. Given UKIP's propensity for turning every political issue into a three-ring circus with themselves at the centre, one does begin to wonder what motivates them and what motivates Mr Bloom in particular.

While we are on the subject, I can certainly confirm Mr Delingpole's comment about Jonathan Foreman's book: it is an excellent and very well researched study of the foreign aid industry, its denizens and the harm it does to the recipients. I shall write a longer piece about it at a future date but can unreservedly recommend it.

Some figures about foreign aid

These are not really the figures we want as they give no detail but, I think, we can assume that every penny is either mis-spent, embezzled or has gone towards keeping bloodthirsty kleptocrats in power.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked HMG:

what is their most recent forecast in cash terms of United Kingdom expenditure on foreign aid, including that part of it administered by the European Union, for the period 2010 to 2015.

Baroness Northover (more here) on behalf of HMG replied:

Total UK ODA spend, including the share of the UK's contribution to the European Commission which has been classed as ODA eligible, for 2010 and 2011 is provided below:

2010:£8,677 million (gross)- £8,452 million (net); and 2011: £8,841 million (gross)- £8,629 million (net).

Please note that the net figures represent expenditure net of loan capital (i.e. principal) repayments.

That's a lot of taxpayers' money to be mis-spent, embezzled and generally wasted on those kleptocrats.

Apparently Mr Cameron has a moral obligation to give away our money

A very good blog on the Adam Smith Institute site, which covers rather wearily the same ground about the sheer wrongness of foreign aid both as far as the enforced donors and the enforced recipients are concerned.

They quote the Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati:

Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

He may have said it several years ago but the situation has not changed.

In a way the question with aid and with charities is what the purpose of the giving is. After all, we keep giving either voluntarily or, in the case of foreign aid, involuntarily through our taxes and yet nothing is improved and the same pictures of suffering are produced every Christmas and after every disaster, small or large, to wring our hearts. Which presumably means that we are not achieving anything and should start thinking of alternative ways of helping. Ah, but do we want to help or do we just want to feel virtuous, in the case of the government that is shelling out aid money to prop up kleptocracies, at other people's expense?

Why, asks Douglas Murray ...

... are politicians forced to resign over trivia but never over serious matters. His example is Andrew Mitchell who resigned over alleged rudeness to the Downing Street coppers whereas he ought to have been forced out over his performance at DfID where he agreed to use UK taxpayers' money to pay terrorist leaders' salaries.

A report by Palestinian Media Watch recently revealed that British taxpayers have been paying salaries to terrorists. It revealed that £3 million every month is paid by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in salaries to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The salaries come from the PA's general budget. That "general budget" is kindly provided by the U.K., among other EU countries.

Many British taxpayers, struggling to pay their family's way through a recession, might rightly wonder why their money is going to pay as much as £2,000 a month to people serving the longest sentences—those who have targeted Israeli buses and other civilian targets with suicide bombers, for instance. That is higher than the average wage in nearly all of Britain. You might be forgiven for wondering, if you were a struggling teaching assistant in the North of England, why failing to tick "suicide bomber" on your careers form should have left you so much worse off than a terrorist in the Middle East.

This is not new, of course, and, despite denials or pleas of ignorance by Alan Duncan, Mitchell's successor it goes on. The lunacy of cutting defence spending and eviscerating our armed forces while paying out money to terrorists who are itching to attack us and our allies is self-evident.

It is, perhaps, time to restart a campaign for the cessation of all international aid.

Just say no

What is it about organizations like the Taxpayers' Alliance that makes them incapable of making truly radical statements even when they clearly would like to? Well, I assume they would like to. I recall asking one of their high panjandrums (yes, I do converse with people of that calibre occasionally) about foreign aid and what their policy was. Well, he said proudly, we are calling for its freezing. Oh really, said I. How about calling for its abolition for a number of excellent economic, political and social reasons? At this point the high panjandrum realized that there was somebody at the other end of the room he absolutely had to talk to.

Here we are again. At the UN David Cameron (that was before he disgraced himself and his school on the Letterman programme) reaffirmed that" that 0.7 per cent of national income should be spent on overseas aid by 2013" . It won't be, of course, but that is not the point. He is still proclaiming the same mantra despite decades of evidence that foreign aid does not help countries to build up their economy, develop strong social structures or promote democratic and humane policies. On the contrary, it strengthens bloodthirsty kleptocrats, prevents the growth of a link between government and governed and allows governments to mis-allocate their income.

So, is the TPA saying this? Errm, no, not exactly. What they are saying is:

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has long argued against increasing the budget of the Department for International Development (DfID). It should not be immune from having to find ways of delivering more for less like all other government departments (except Health), especially when serious concerns remain about whether value for money is being delivered out of its existing budget.

Those concerns have been voiced for many a long year and the sort of scandal Andrew Gilligan has once again uncovered is not new either. The only purpose foreign aid serves, apart from filling up the coffers of the people Mr Gilligan so aptly names "Poverty Barons" and of the aforementioned kleptocrats, is to make us all feel so virtuous with no effort of our own. The money goes, we feel virtuous and to hell with the recipient countries and their people.

Lasting Legacy - part 3,765

To listen to some people, especially politicians and their acolytes but some others as well, you'd think this was an event that happens about once a century and the world has changed beyond recognition after the two weeks that have just passed.

Errm, no. Olympic Games happen every four years and each time they are claimed to be the best ever, assuming that not too many people get disqualified (the process has just begun), not too many people get killed (only one unfortunate cyclist this time) and they finish on time. The world has not changed despite so many unexpected British medals and despite the weather more or less obliging. Britain is no different from the country she was two weeks ago and the world has not suddenly noticed that this strange little group of islands exists.

Der Spiegel thinks that the Olympic Games gave Britain a much-needed boost, presumably because uniquely of all countries in the Western hemisphere Britain was in the doldrums. For some reason particular praise is extended to what sounds like a spectacularly naff and ridiculous closing ceremony which affirmed beyond any question that British culture consists of pop music and one or two TV programmes with Eric Idle of Monty Python fame representing cultural history.

The Evening Standard has been hysterical about the Games for the last two weeks, occasionally interrupting itself to bring the odd piece of bad news. What I should like to know is how its own readership has done. My impression is that far fewer people have been reading the Standard in the last two weeks and far more copies are left in piles on stations at the end of the day. But getting accurate figures from newspapers these days, especially the freebie ones, is past hoping for.

Today we were told that the rush for the Paralympic tickets is on. If true (a big if) we might find ourselves in the odd situation of having seen empty seats at Olympic events and none at the usually far less popular Paralympic ones.

Then, of course, there is the obligatory story of the Olympic afterglow that will give the West End shops a boost. They will need it in the light of the losses they must have made in the last two weeks when they were half empty. So far the rush was not very visible whereas the pre-Olympic one, which, I see, was slipped into the article in a rather sly fashion, was. We all noted how many people were in London in the weeks before the Olympics and how few during them. Will the promised £250 million "afterglow" be sufficient for that and for the undoubted emptiness during the Paralympics? We shall see when the Q3 results come out.

What else? Well, Amol Rajan tells us that the spirit of 2012 will revive the Big Society, an idea whose time did not come last time round and is not likely to do so now. I understand that the various embassies in London studied the PM's confused burblings on the subject and produced reports for their governments. We shall definitely need to have a look at them if the idea is to be revived.

Patience Wheatcroft thinks that the Olympic success has bolstered Britain's self-confidence enough for the country to get out and seek out new markets beyond the eurozone. This woman is supposed to be our leading economic commentator and has, for that reason, been given a peerage by the admiring Prime Minister. Yet, she appears not to have noticed that Britain has always, throughout her history, had markets beyond what might be called the countries of the eurozone.

In fact, even according to official statistics that are usually skewed by the reluctance to separate out the Rotterdam effect or to analyze lost opportunities, Britain's main export market is now outside the EU. Not just the eurozone but the EU as a whole and it was all done before the Olympics.

Incidentally, I have been told quite seriously on another site that Britain coming third in the gold medal count will mean that the world will now take us seriously. Are we not all pleased that this historically, politically and economically insignificant country has finally been placed on the map?

Never mind all that. What are the real aspects of the Lasting Legacy?

To start with, Lord Coe is getting a new and exciting job complete with his own quango, I've no doubt. Figures of how much it will all cost have not, so far as I can make out, been announced but perhaps the TPA will get on to that subject. He might even become the President of the one of the world's most corrupt organizations the IOC, which has temporarily been proclaimed by our media as the greatest of all great organizations whose aim it is to save the world from ... well, just about everything.

Meanwhile, David Cameron, obviously frustrated by the feel-good factor that has accrued to Hizonner the Mayor, called together another World Hunger Summit, which will get rid of world hunger as part of the Olympic Legacy. Well, to be absolutely precise it will squander huge amounts of taxpayers' money on more summits and meetings, transnational organizations, good will visits and aid handed over to the bloodthirsty kleptocrats who prevent the Third World from having any kind of economic development, which is the only way hunger can be overcome.

Well, that's two legacies. What are you complaining about?

Sensible but does not go far enough

The Swiss People's Party, which has acquired the sobriquet "far-right" though even Wikipedia describes it as "national conservative and right-wing populist" (pretty bad, really, unlike left-wing populist) takes a eurosceptic and anti-immigration line.

The party has also come up with the strong suggestion that Switzerland gives far too much in foreign aid.

The president of the Swiss People’s Party, Toni Brunner, expressed regret at the government's decision to increase development aid in an interview with newspaper SonntagsBlick.

The National Council has already approved a budget from 2013 to 2016 of 11.35 billion francs ($11.62 billion). This means that by 2015, 0.5 percent of Switzerland’s GDP would be spent on aid.

...

Brunner would prefer to set a constitutional percentage limit on the amount of aid set aside by Switzerland, as well as a sum that should not be exceeded. The party has not yet proposed any exact figures.

Given that foreign aid does little to help the people of developing countries but a great deal to help the bloodthirsty kleptocrats who are in power in those countries as well as subsidize armaments, nuclear weapons and attempts at space exploration, I should like to see a political party demand complete cessation of this evil practice.

I take it we no longer need a Prime Minister

Somehow I managed to miss this tremendous piece of news. David Cameron who, I believe, is still the Prime Minister in this country (a source of constant surprise to me) has been asked to chair a UN committee to oversee development goals. I was under the impression that a Prime Minister's first task is to be ... well, a Prime Minister of the country he has been elected to lead. It is not as if there were no problems to deal with here. What exactly does he think he is doing chairing ridiculous UN committees? Even Tony Blair, lover of multilateralism and transnationalism par excellence did not do anything so stupid.

The invitation, accepted by the prime minister, represents a political coup for Cameron, who has stuck to the government's commitment to increase overseas aid to 0.7% of UK GDP, despite the recession.

Cameron's agreement makes certain that he will resist any rightwing efforts to cut UK aid, but it may also mean a significant reshaping of the millennium development goals.

The goals decide the international targets of global aid channelled bilaterally and multilaterally through organisations such as the World Bank and the IMF.

The current eight goals range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/Aids and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015. Many will be missed.

I wonder if coup is quite the word to be used here.

Of course, the goals will not be met. How can they be? The whole idea that aid is the way out of poverty has been disproved over and over again and with developed countries need to tighten belts as well as concentrate on their own economic growth, something this excuse for a government is singularly incapable of doing, the hand-outs will slow down. That may not be such a bad thing if it will turn the developing countries' attention to developing their economies through reforming tax systems, creating free trade agreements and making their countries attractive for investment. After all, aid does little beyond keeping bloodthirsty kleptocrats in power and prevent economic development in recipient countries.

Meanwhile, the new World Bank President has been announced and he is, to nobody's particular surprise, President Obama's nominee, Jim Yong Kim, President of Dartmouth College. I have little sympathy for people who moan about the fact that the World Bank presidency always goes to an American (or, in this case, a Korean American). The US puts in the largest slice of money, followed by the European countries. As long as we have a World Bank (and there are very good arguments for its abolition or, at least, scaling down) it will be run by those who pay for it and so it should be.

We have been told endlessly about the way certain rapidly developing countries, of whom Nigeria, the home of the other candidate, is supposed to be one overtaking the West. Fine. Let them do so. Let them stop taking aid from us and pay a larger share of those tranzi organizations they are so in favour of. Then we can talk about the next World Bank President not being American.

Of course, not everyone in the developing world is enamoured of the World Bank, its condescending attempts to run the world economy (as if that were possible) and endless new ideas of how to solve poverty, which can be solved only economic growth and investment.

Franklin Cudjoe, the Founding Director and President of IMANI, the Ghanaian Center of Policy and Education, wrote this:

Part of Dr. Jim Yong Kim's acceptance speech as the new World Bank President read "My discussions with the Board and member countries point to a global consensus around the importance of inclusive growth. We are closer than ever to achieving the mission inscribed at the entrance of the World Bank – Our Dream is a World Free of Poverty" NO! We ordinary citizens of the developing world want you and the World Bank to map out an exit plan to get out of the way for poverty to be solved by entrepreneurs without governmental borders!

Why do I have the feeling that neither Dr Kim nor the Boy-King will listen to those sane words?

In the meantime, do we just assume that we no longer need a Prime Minister?

Mihir Bose on India, aid and the need for links

An excellent article by Mihir Bose about the modern India, British aid (which is unnecessary) and the need for sensible links between the two countries.

Britain would be much better advised to forget the nonsense that aid helps to build ties. What is needed is to develop links with the new India based on a shared history, which the Indians are now ready to acknowledge.

It is, in fact, time to forget that outdated concept, the Commonwealth, whose members are not waiting for Britain to take its position at the head, and start thinking in terms of the new idea, the Anglosphere.

An aid agency being honest?

Well, reasonably honest. We are talking about Médecins Sans Frontières, which has gone against the usual compound of pointless boasting and demands for more funds that aid agencies and NGOs indulge in as a matter of course.

Four million Somalis are said to be in crisis. Given that insecurity is limiting international aid groups’ activities and some have been banned from territory controlled by Islamist rebels, to what extent are they actually able to help?

"We know we are not yet fully meeting the enormous needs the Somali people are facing," the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, said in Nairobi this week, while stressing that additional funds are now enabling international and local agencies to scale up their work in famine-hit regions.

Around 1.2 million people received food assistance in August, for example. That's up from 750,000 in July, but still only covers just over a quarter of those who are going hungry.

Merlin's move to expand its clinics follows comments from a top official at another medical aid group, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), who accused other agencies of "glossing over the man-made causes of hunger and starvation in the region and the difficulties in addressing them."

Unni Karunakara, president of MSF's International Council wrote that

that many aid and media organisations have portrayed Somalia’s emergency in "one-dimensional terms," ascribing it largely to the severe drought affecting large parts of East Africa.

"But only blaming natural causes ignores the complex geopolitical realities exacerbating the situation and suggests that the solution lies in merely finding funds and shipping enough food," he said.

He added that it's the war between hardline Islamist rebels and the transitional government, backed by the international community, "that has kept independent international assistance away from many communities."

MSF continues to work in Somalia but has at least a glimmering of why the problems stay and stay and stay.

Here is the full article on Comment Is Free. For once the responses are interesting, too.

Let us not forget that the African Union leaders, who talk long and loud about African needs and African brotherhood, have failed their brothers and sisters who are suffering from famine (again). Perhaps, they, too, are suffering from aid fatigue though their help and donations have been little enough; or, perhaps, they do not want anyone to look too closely at the political reasons for the frequently repeated crises.

A reminder

Franklin Cudjoe, a man who knows considerably more about Africa, its countries, their economy and problems than our own Andrew Mitchell (no, I didn't want him either), reminded me and others this morning of an article he wrote in 2005 for the Wall Street Journal and reprinted in African Liberty in 2005 about the Nigerian famine and why African countries continue to have famines and continue to need (apparently) international aid.

As we are about to provide another £38 million in aid to Ethiopia where there is yet again famine, this article is worth re-reading and pondering over. (Oh yes, full disclosure: Franklin is a good friend.)

How can one be so heartless?

How can one be so heartless as not to laugh when yet another Conservative Minister pronounces stupid things? This time, it is Andrew Mitchell, MP for Sutton Coldfield and Secretary of State for Foreign Aid International Development. Now there is a job we could so easily do without.

Some time in 2004 when Mr Mitchell became Shadow Secretary of State for International Development I went to a talk he gave, which was moderately interesting. He seemed to think at the time that the way forward for developing countries, particularly in Africa, was through trade and one can hardly argue with that. I do not recall him making any but the vaguest suggestions about changing various problems around the Common Agricultural and the Common Fisheries Policies; in fact I do not recall him even mentioning those noxious structures. His most important contribution was the need for African countries to lower trade barriers and for trade between those countries to develop. This, again, is not something anyone can argue with, though there are reasons for those trade barriers and import tariffs being so high, an obvious one being that import taxes are easy to collect in countries where the tax base is low and money received by the government through aid means no need is felt to rectify the position.

The main problem with that idea was that Mr Mitchell seemed to be under the impression that Britain could somehow impose this policy on African countries and to create a Pan-African Trade Area. (I did write about the meeting at the time on my previous bloghome.)

Mr Mitchell was not challenged much, partly because there seemed no possibility at the time of him putting any of his ideas into place for some length of time and partly because most people thought it was great advance to have a man in that position who seemed to understand the importance of trade in development.

That did not last long. As we can see here he was instrumental in setting up those ludicrous trips by various Conservative politicians and activists to Rwanda to do various bits of work such as construction. At the time a number of people pointed out that, perhaps, they should have sent qualified managers and engineers and hired local labour to do the work, thus strengthening economic development. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I wrote about it at the time, as well.)

Then he became involved in the row about the BBC Gaza Appeal and seems to have forgotten all he ever knew about trade being a better way of developing than aid. Now he is Secretary of State for Foreign Aid International Development and is responsible for such brilliant ideas as "a guarantee that British legislation will be amended to ensure that Britain's aid contributions will be maintained at 0.7% of UK GNI (Gross National Income) by 2013".

Among other places aid goes to countries like India, Pakistan and China who manage to maintain large armies, nuclear weapons and develop space programmes. It also goes to countries whose kleptocratic rulers never need to look to their own population for money or support. And, of course, there is the problem - indeed, it seems to be the only problem for some people - that with those threatened cuts in the public sector, handing money over to other countries is a tad illogical. We are back to Peter Bauer's comment (which, apparently, he could not recall making) about the poor of the rich countries subsidizing the rich of the poor countries.

Mr Mitchell is now in hot water for a particularly fatuous comment. It seems that far from complaining about the idea of sending tax money to countries like India or, for that matter, Uganda, we should be proud of our non-achievements - we can become an "aid superpower" and what more could one ask from life.

Not everybody is happy with this notion and some are very unhappy with the suggestion that the corrupt, disruptive and counter productive aid programme that has managed to keep African countries in poverty and helped to line pockets there and in India and Pakistan (to name just two) is something to be as proud of as we are (mostly justifiably) proud of our armed forces.

Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘The idea that we are going to be a world superpower in overseas aid – I have no idea what that means. It is the sort of complete tosh you would expect from a Labour minister.

‘The Coalition Government is losing the plot over this – they are totally out of step with the public mood.

‘It is all very well talking about the pride we have in our Armed Forces, but the fact is we are increasing foreign aid by £4billion at a time when our Armed Forces are being dramatically cut.

‘The priorities are all wrong – that money should be going to our Armed Forces, because they are the best at doing overseas aid.’

Fellow Tory Philip Davies accused Mr Mitchell of presiding over a ‘vanity project’.
He added: ‘We shouldn’t be judging our effectiveness by the amount of money we are spending – that is a socialist way of looking at things.

Those are surprisingly sensible comments, given that they come from Tory MPs. I particularly like the one about not judging effectiveness by the amount of money we spend. Indeed, it is a socialist way of looking at things but then, that is precisely what we can expect from both sections of the Cleggeron Coalition.

What I find very disappointing (well, more annoying than disappointing as I expected nothing else) is the reluctance to broach the whole subject of whether foreign aid is a good idea from anybody's point of view. Indeed, on a number of forums I saw the inevitable comments from those who criticized Mr Mitchell about not minding foreign aid if it was properly accounted for; about the most important point being that we are cutting back, allegedly, on other spending as if it would be perfectly acceptable to send those vast sums to corrupt leaders if we were not; and, inevitably, the faux-heart-rending sob about how cruel we are not wanting to help poor people in need.

As ever, nothing will be done beyond a little tinkering at the edges, until the issue is faced properly. May I suggest a course of reading by various African writers and analysts, such as those published on African Liberty or Imanighana? Something might filter through.

We all miss Peter Bauer

This blog's views on international aid are known to all its readers and go back further than two weeks ago when Melanie Phillips, apparently, pronounced very similar opinions on Question Time. All of us who have seen the futility and, indeed, harmfulness, of international aid (formerly known as foreign aid) have been influenced by the pithy and lucid arguments advanced for many years (to no purpose, in his own view) by Peter Bauer, later Lord Bauer.

Here Tim Knox, Acting Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, reminisces about the great man and insists that his arguments are more valid now than ever before. I always found Lord Bauer's heavily accented pronouncements perfectly intelligible but, maybe, I have more experience of accents than Mr Knox does.

Scrap it completely

James Delingpole weighs in on the Foreign Aid debate (I thought it was called International Aid these days as we don't want to talk about things and countries being "foreign). He is absolutely right not just on the particulars that he seems to have mentioned on the Jeremy Vine show but on the general points that he makes on his blog (and how glad I am that he has not given up blogging completely). Foreign or International Aid is, not to put too fine a point on it, an evil institution that helps to keep bloodthirsty kleptomaniacs in power and prevents economic development in many countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. It should be scrapped not just on economic grounds because we really are in no position to afford it but on moral ones.

Believe it when I see it

Somehow, I cannot work up any excitement over the results of the Irish election. Yes, the destruction of Fianna Fail is a lovely sight but will Fine Gael or whatever coalition that is cobbled together be any better? We do not know and can only wait to see. The Daily Mail seems quite excited. Whether that is a good thing or not is a moot point.

Bruno Waterfield in the Telegraph thinks that the new government will be on collision course with the EU. Ah yes, just as Cameron's government was going to be on that collision course. In fact, the collision course is so crowded all these governments are colliding with each other. What exactly will be the threat? We are not going to take your money. That'll show you.

Another story that makes me say, yes, yes, yes, believe it when I see it is the one about Britain, possibly, deciding to take away aid from countries who are really rather rich now.

Countries such as Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Moldova and Serbia will be stripped of millions of pounds a year, following the inquiry ordered by International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell.

Aid to India - which can afford its own space programme - will also be frozen.

First of all, will be stripped after the report is published and thoroughly discussed is just a little vague. My guess is that in a few months' or a year's time we shall find that there is still money going to all these countries.

Secondly, the list of who are too rich to be given aid is a little eccentric. Is Moldova really richer than India overall?

Thirdly, it is going to make no difference whatsoever. The amount given in aid will be going up; our ability to check where the money is going will remain zero; the various UN and NGO projects will still be riddled with corruption; and, above all, aid will remain a pernicious policy that will keep bloodthirsty kleptocrats in power and prevent poor countries from developing their economies, property rights or good governance.

What is to be Done?

I make no apology for using that hackneyed title again. Like so many political ideas it emanates from Russian radical circles, first used by Nikolay Chernyshevsky as title to his highly influential and immensely boring novel Что Делать?, which means just that: What is to be Done?. Written in the early 1860s, it outlines in many many badly written pages ideas about revolutionaries and the formation of the revolutionary elite. It says something about those radicals that they took to this novel (or pretended to do so) in a country that boasted at the time some of the world's greatest writers.

Other writers responded as did Dostoyevsky, viciously, in Notes from the Underground (Записки из подполья), published in 1864. This was a protest against the soulless materialism of what he perceived to be the modern age but, in particular, it was a sarcastic attack on Vera Pavlovna, Chernyshevsky's heroine and her interminable dreams, particularly the last one in which people appear to live in some sort of a crystal palace.

The great novelist Tolstoy wrote a pamphlet with that title in 1886, which is a description of Russian social conditions, presumably as seen from Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's mansion and estate. What was required, he thought, was change within people themselves.

The best known work is, inevitably, V. I. Lenin's. It is as boring and badly written as Chernyshevsky's but it is shorter and there are no dreams in it. The book is the most important one Lenin wrote as it gives a precise, if badly phrased, idea of the "need" for a revolutionary elite that would impose its own views on the people. There are also reasonably clear instructions on how that elite is to be formed into a coherent and disciplined party.

The reason for these musings is an internet conversation I have been having with no less a person than Gawain Towler (name published with his permission and encouragement), Head of Media at UKIP who linked to this story in the Telegraph.

If you were a Brussels bureaucrat and David Cameron dumped a cheque for a few billion onto your desk to spend on foreign aid, what would you do with it? Would you spend it (a) on poor people or (b) on cocktails and dancing for white European socialists, and on some vanity projects to promote the power of the EU?

Well, if you were a genuine Eurocrat, you’d probably have gone with (b). Thanks to the EU – which takes a fifth of our international development budget – a chunk of our aid isn’t spent on fighting global poverty at all, but on promoting the EU’s own political goals – which is why so much of it ends up in states that don’t need it, such as Russia, Singapore, India and China.

Last week, however, the Eurocrats decided to spend our money a little closer to home by hosting a major conference in Brussels. Along with providing lots of European Leftists with cocktails and a dance floor, this promoted “the key role of the European Union” in international development and helped to “improve European cohesion”.

To top it all, as Martin Banks and Gawain Towler report, the conference spent aid money to host a fashion show, showcasing seven European designers and one Moroccan. Apparently, this helped the delegates understand the Millennium Development Goals, but it strikes me that it was just an excuse for a jolly at the taxpayer’s expense.

Foreign aid or international aid, as we are supposed to call it now, money spent on parties and fashion shows is not precisely news. My response was that at least money spent on a party and fashion show in Brussels would not go into the coffers of evil, bloodthirsty kleptocrats who use it to fight nasty wars and oppress their people. I was accused of being ultra-cynical.

(In parenthesis let me add that I have been accused of cynicism many times, though not by Mr Towler, but I have never until a recent exchange on a particularly ridiculous forum, been accused of being a do-gooder and, by implication, a bleedin' heart liberal. This was not a person who knows me; nor had he bothered to read anything I write. There is a first time for everything.)

Anyway, moving right along, the discussion between Mr Towler and me then developed into the usual one of "well, what should we do to get people interested". As many times before I maintained that producing silly stories and yet more examples of corruption gets us nowhere. They produced two reactions: people either 1. shrugged their shoulders and said well what do you expect, yawn, what's on the tele, or 2. started getting worked up about the need for reform, control, supervision and transparency. When 2. did not produce the necessary results because they could not, people would revert to 1.

Well, what would you do, asked Mr Towler quite reasonably. Should we start swinging from the Cenotaph? No, I pointed out, as, apart from anything else, it achieved nothing beyond annoying very many people.

It is time, I continued, to start assuming that most people are adults and capable of assimilating serious ideas, such as international aid does not help poor people but keeps bloodthirsty kleptocrats in power and the EU is a state in the making that has already destroyed Britain's sovereignty and constitutional democracy as well as being economically, politically and environmentally regressive and destructive.

Ah yes, said he, but the media does not want that - the media wants silly stories. How well do I know that and how well do I recall being press officer for the Campaign for Independent Britain (CIB) and getting calls from journalists who wanted really stupid European stories. All right, I'd say, how about the really stupid common fisheries policy. Nothing doing. We want something our readers can easily understand. Square strawberries, for instance. Those stories kept appearing as did stories of corruption and wasted money and where has all that got us? We are ever more integrated in the Project and have a non-Labour government that is fully as bad as John Major's Conservative one was (which is when I became involved in all this).

When I say that we should accept that most people are adults who are capable of assimilating serious ideas I do not mean journalists or politicians. Sadly, I probably do not mean people who are involved in party politics either but those are ever fewer in number as we keep being told. But I do mean others - the electorate of all ages and social positions.

There is no question in my view: while it is quite a good idea to produce those stories of wastage and corruption, what we really need to do is go for the central problems, whether it be the EU, international aid or, for that matter, education in this country. Nothing else will get us anywhere. We do miss the likes of the old IEA that changed economic thinking in this country and there seems to be no money around for a eurosceptic think-tank as money tends to go to useless campaigns for referendums or to perestroika organizations like Open Europe or the Taxpayers' Alliance. We do have the internet, of course, and the American example of a blogosphere that became enormously powerful.

So here is my first response to the question of what is to be done - concentrate on the main issues and assume your audience is capable of understanding them and fight through the new media, whether it be the blogosphere (as Mr Towler does as well), other websites or, let's accept it, social media. That might get there somewhere. Anyone has any better ideas?

This is good news

Via Aidwatchers, a blog I have not seen before but whose tag-line "just asking that aid benefit the poor" I take issue with, I find that

The External Affairs Ministry has instructed the Finance Ministry to inform London that India will not accept further aid from next April.

Last week, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told the ministry that “internal discussions” within UK’s Department for International Development — which accounts for over 80% of all bilateral aid to India — were “to limit the aid further and channelise it to specific projects of their choice in certain states instead of routing it through the Central government”.

“Rather than wait for such a situation to develop... it would be better if our decision not to avail any further DFID assistance with effect from 1st April 2011 could be conveyed to the British side in an appropriate manner at the earliest,” she wrote to Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla.

Excellent. Let us hope that the Indian government sticks to its guns, stops taking British and any other foreign aid and concentrates on making India investment-friendly for its own people and for foreigners.

Let us also hope that DFID accepts that and does not plead with the Indian government to go on accepting aid that is so destructive and something that we really cannot afford any more. Nor should we, incidentally. Unfortunately, DFID's existence and ever growing financial clout depends on countries getting foreign aid. They are not likely to kill the goose that lays those golden eggs.

Attending events

The political year has restarted, which means that there are all sorts of events to attend. Today I listened to Dr David Nabarro CBE, UN Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition at the Henry Jackson Society. Yes, indeed, he spoke well about Global Food Security: Recent Developments and Challenges with a good power point back-up. In other words, the slides of the power point had real information that enlarged on what he said, maps, charts and some figures.

In the end I carried away some not vary happy impressions. It seems that in the last thirty years there has been a drop in investment in agriculture in many parts of the world and a rise in poverty and number of people who went hungry (though numbers and definitions are hard to come by). What he did not say is that in the same thirty years there has been a stupendous rise in NGOs, UN committees, criss-crossing of continents by people who attend conferences and all sorts of pledges of greater international aid. At the very least, one could say that this development has not been helpful yet Dr Nabarro's responses to various questions included references to further committees, meetings of transnational organizations and the international community.

To be fair, he seemed to be in favour of trade and investment, against export controls in Sub-Saharan African countries and import controls as well as dumping of subsidized produce on those countries by the EU and the United States.

He also had no real answer to the question I posed about the political reality of the worst region for poverty and famine, that is Sub-Saharan Africa. It is all very well for some people to ask about predictions about what kind of instability and violence might develop from climate change but the fact it is that those countries are already unstable and violent as well as corrupt. There are no legal structures and no rules of property ownership, which prevents investment and development. The governments live off foreign aid and are ready to be bribed by anyone, such as the Chinese government who have been known to use those countries as a place where unemployed Chinese workers can be utilized and where good land can be acquired for the production of food for China. Until those political and legal problems are solved the future of Sub-Saharan Africa remains bleak. An end to international aid would be a good beginning.

What an excellent idea!

Are we looking for savings in public expenditure? Do we want to make that deficit smaller? Of course, we do and some of our friends from overseas have come up with a great idea. Not a new idea, mind you, as they would be the first to acknowledge but a great one: stop international aid. It will save a great deal of money, not least by abolishing the burgeoning bureaucracy of DFID, cut back NGOs and, best of all, let the recipients of that aid actually develop economically and politically.

These ideas, often voiced on this blog and on EUReferendum (too often for me to link) were expressed pithily in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph. Signed by a number of important writers and free-marketeers from different African countries (including my good friend Franklin Cudjoe of Imani in Ghana) it pleads with the people of Britain and, as a side-issue, with the Cleggeron Coalition whose Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, has been mouthing embarrassing platitudes while insisting that international aid must be ring-fenced in the supposed spending cuts.

As Africans, we urge the generous-spirited British to reconsider an aid programme they can ill afford, and which we do not want or need. A real offer from the British people to help our development would consist of the abolition of the Common Agricultural Policy, which keeps African agricultural exports out of the European marketplace.

Naturally, I have no issue with that paragraph or the rest of the letter. But, sadly, one needs to point out to the signatories that the Common Agricultural Policy is not Britain's to abolish. In fact, we have very little say in it though we do participate in that invidious set-up. Likewise, we have very little say in the various protectionist measures passed in the European Union. That policy is not ours either though we all too often applaud it, to our shame.