1968 days ago
The Mrs has been to see her new colleagues in the Grim North and has been given her lecture schedule for next term. And on it is a talk called “Greed is Good”. Of course it damn well is.
3670 days ago
My fave libertarian Tory blogger Charlotte Argyle is in fine form once again. The child of Thatcher rightly points out that capitalism not aid is what is needed for both donors and recipients. Over to the pin up girl of Tory blogging:
It starts with a chap called Mr O, an Ethiopian Farmer who claims that the £1.3Bn the UK has sent to Ethiopian in the last 5 years has done nothing more than fund a despotic government which has enacted great atrocities on his family and livelihood by using brutal force to annex land and property from hundreds of native villagers to sell off to foreign investors or add to its own little stash of Government chattels. Just to put our ‘good deed’ into context Ethiopia is among the biggest recipients of British aid receiving £38 million in July 2011 alone.
This simply serves to exposure the huge lack of accountability and traceability on the behalf of the do-gooders at DFID when it comes to ensuring that OUR money goes to the right source. It also magnifies the dangers around minimal foreign intervention without a serious approach to risk. To prove my point, imagine the blushing faces last year as DFID had to admit to the National Audit Office that it did not know in which country £530 million of aid was spent nor why a country like Nigeria, which is flourishing into an emerging economy – with the second highest national income of all African countries still receives £275 million from the UK in 2013 and will receive a further £250 million until 2015. .
So now we have Mr O set to sue the UK Government for hundreds of thousands of pounds – taxpayers pounds, in the name of DFID breaching the Department for International Development’s (DfID) human rights rules (yep breaching their own rules). But here is the best bit, some kind London lawyers (Leigh Day to be precise) have decided to help Mr O taking on the case on his behalf and have already served papers on DFID .
As they feel it is necessary to point out - Mr O is not seeking compensation but challenging the Government’s approach to aid – Well thanks Mr O but I think that slimming down of our ever gout-ridden state letting more people keep more of their own money may have the same effect. One has to wonder how much Leigh Day are set to make on this little case though. Imagine the headline "Ethiopian gets legal aid from UK - to sue the UK for giving aid to... Ethiopia"
DFID’s complete lack of action
