British Aid is Dishonest and Immoral!

British aid is probably the most dishonest and immoral policy adopted by any British democratic government at any time. It is nothing more than the British Establishment’s attempt to maintain the Colonial superiority it lost around one hundred years ago.

Let me explain.

Sixty years ago, the Government decided – for no discernible reason – that Britons retiring abroad would have their pensions frozen at the point of leaving the UK. Those pensioners would no longer be paid according to the National Insurance contributions they made during their working lives, when they mandatorily invested in the government pension insurance scheme. Until around 2000, pensioners were not told about the withdrawal of accumulated pension benefits until they had moved overseas, many with little more income to look forward to since private pensions until the 1970s/1980s were few and far between. Many of those early pensioners fought in WW2 and returned to help rebuild a shattered UK, not realising that the new mandatory National Insurance scheme had already been manipulated to betray everything for which they had fought.

But there was a hidden, untold reason. One by one, parts of the former British Empire were demanding independence from colonial exploitation, independence from British rule. Britain, depleted by WW2, was powerless to prevent the movement towards state independence but the ruling class could not face being unable to boast about ‘the sun never setting on the British Empire’. They needed a way to dispel their spite. The frozen pensions’ policy was it! Over sixty years, the British government not only denied billions of pounds to its own pensioners, it also deprived countries of those billions where the pensions would have been spent – mostly the Commonwealth countries.

Today, the Department for International Development (DfID) spends £12 billion a year and more on projects to help countries improve standards of health, education and development. However, many of those projects would not have been necessary if the billions of frozen pensions had been paid in the first place. Sixty years of additional income would have helped many of the countries to carry out the very projects which DfID is ‘gifting’ to them now. But then, UK Government would have lost the ability to continue the Colonial exploitation hidden within the Overseas Aid system.

In a recent debate on the huge amount allocated for overseas aid, a number of MPs proclaimed themselves to be ‘proud’ of being part of this Colonial gesturing and it may be worth questioning why so much pride. For that we should start with a newspaper ‘sting’ a couple of years ago when MPs were offered the opportunity to start an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) to support a questionably governed paradise country. Dozens of MPs clamoured into the meeting, one question on their lips: when can we visit this paradise and what sort of accommodation will we have access to? Here we have the clue to today’s ‘pride’ in spending £12bn of taxpayers’ money on overseas projects. Many of the MPs who expressed their support have visited, and continue to visit, countries where aid has been allocated – expenses-paid trips to wave the Colonial British flag and brag about the British ‘mother’ government’s ability to give money away. No-one has yet questioned how many, with their taxpayer-paid airline tickets, took the opportunity to arrange a convenient rest-and-recuperation detour on the way.

Plans have recently been passed by the House of Commons (though not yet the House of Lords) for a dramatic increase in the amount of aid that can be channelled through the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC, wholly owned by DfID). CDC may be given up to £6bn to spend on spurious projects, even though it has been unable to demonstrate adequately that the money it has already spent has done anything to create jobs or indeed to make any lasting difference to people’s lives in some of the world’s poorest places where it is said to have spent money. Development minister Rory Stewart has said that Britain had a “moral obligation” to invest in the CDC, which he described as a proven development model; but then, he would say that wouldn’t he?

CDC has been questioned about its lack of transparency and its use of offshore tax havens. Tax havens! How can the British Government possibly justify the use of tax havens, which are traditionally accessed by the wealthy to avoid tax in the countries where their wealth has been made? With the secrecy that surrounds tax havens we must seriously question where that aid money actually ends up; tax havens and zero proof of any effective benefits should suggest very big questions that need to be asked.

But perhaps the greatest dishonesty of all is the government’s constant moan that it does not have money to end the frozen pensions policy; it does not have money to end food parcels in the UK; it does not have money to address the crises in mental health and elderly care; and it does not have money to rescue the National Health Service which was once the pride of Britain. What the Government must now face is the very real situation that taxpayers should not have the tax they pay hi-jacked into spurious projects in questionable countries when there is so much need amongst Britons who have paid for the respect and dignity and security they now deserve. Respect and dignity and security for British citizens should be a top priority yet all are being abandoned or ignored for a lack of money. After all:

5p in every £ spent on overseas aid could end the frozen pensions policy

5p in every £ spent on overseas aid could end the need for food parcels in the UK

50p in every £ spent on overseas aid could made a significant difference to mental health and elderly care

That would still leave £4 billion for overseas aid – far more than many other countries give away!

The message for the Government must be – away with the dishonesty and hypocrisy and lack of transparency; British citizens demand the respect, dignity and security they have paid for!

British Tax must be used for British citizens first!!

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