British People Facing Largest Domestic Spending Cuts in History While Foreign Aid Budget Blossoms
Media reports are abuzz with stories that David Cameron has ordered Ministers to draw up 40 percent spending cuts — while a new report just out has revealed a series of staggeringly stupid projects included in the £9 billion “ring fenced” foreign aid budget.
The rumoured 40 percent cut is 15 percent higher than the figure given by Chancellor George Osborne in his emergency budget speech, and if it comes to pass, will see additional massive job losses across the public sector.Even a 25 percent cut will see tens of thousands of policemen, teachers, town hall workers and other civil servants end up on the dole and entire sections of the civil service are set to be shut down.
A new report issued by the International Policy Network (IPN) think tank has shocked observers with a new overview of how the foreign aid budget, administered by the Department for International Development, is spent.
According to the IPN report, £3.6 million of DFID has been given to the Labour-supporting TUC for “advocacy and lobbying work to build support for development in the United Kingdom.”
It has yet to be shown exactly how the TUC has lobbied anybody to “support development.”
The IPN report also revealed that £756,000 was spent on a “Strategic Framework Partnership Agreement” which funded TUC training on how to apply for DFID grants.
In addition, the DFID gave £600,000 to set up a think tank called “Connections For Development” (CFD) which has as its aim the provision of a “forum for black and ethnic minority organisations on issues relating to international development.”
A 2007 audit of the CFD found that 40 percent of the members listed on its online presence did not have email addresses, and that the leaders of the organisation displayed a “lack of demonstrable experience in international development.”
Other astonishing grants highlighted in the IPN report include:
- £1 million to the “Global Education Derby” which supposedly teaches primary school children that “unequal development fosters poverty and conflict”;
- £190,000 to the Scottish Development Education Centre to teach nursery and pre-school children about foreign aid on the premise that “attitudes begin to develop at a very young age”;
- £183,375 to the Brighton Peace and Environment Centre for “pictures showing how individuals in different parts of the world are intrinsically linked through the challenge of climate change”;
- £300,000 to the National Union of Teachers to “enable them to become global agents of change”; and
- £1 billion every year to the EU to distribute to “developing countries.”
Caroline Boin, who co-authored the research for the IPN think tank, said: “It is a travesty to add billions to the foreign aid budget in the middle of a national crisis. The Government wants to sack 35,000 police officers while it pours money into a Department notorious for nonsensical projects.”
Once again, the interests of the British people have been put last.
