Express Newspaper and Some Tories Try to Hijack BNP’s Popular Anti-Foreign Aid Policy
The controlled Daily Express newspaper and a small element of the Conservative Party are trying to hijack the British National Party’s highly popular anti-foreign aid policy as public resentment of that blatant swindle grows.
The Express has now carried two stories demanding that the foreign aid budget be cut while British people at home face massive front line service cuts, directly echoing BNP policy and public pronouncements on the matter.In addition, some Tory MPs have expressed their misgivings over the issue and a poll on the main Tory activist website has shown that over 70 percent of their readers support the BNP’s policy of halting foreign aid completely.
In addition, the Express newspaper carried out an opinion poll of its own readers which revealed that 98 percent agreed with the BNP’s policy.
The Express pointed out that the decision to increase the foreign aid budget “will cost every British family £2,000 over the next four years.”
Chancellor George Osborne revealed this past week that the amount of taxpayers’ cash sent abroad as foreign aid would to rise to £12.6 billion a year over the next four years. The BNP had earlier calculated that the foreign aid spend would rise to £13.1 billion, based on a 0.7 percent cut of the Gross National Income (GNI).
The difference between the two figures is likely attributable to Mr Osborne having access to the very latest GNI figures, but the relative accuracy of the BNP estimate is still remarkable.
According to one of the Express’s indignant articles, this increase in foreign aid “could pay for around 200 new schools, eight new hospitals, or the cost of locking up an extra 97,368 criminals every year.”
The Express went on to claim that the £3.7 billion annual rise is “equivalent to £500 a year for every household in Britain or £2,000 over four years.”
Some backbench Tory MPs, including Philip Hollobone, Philip Davies and Peter Bone, all clearly rattled at the extent of the growing public anger, have at last spoken out against the foreign aid spend.
Their indignation is however false, as the ring fencing and commitment to increase foreign aid was part of their party’s election manifesto which they all endorsed.
Ironically, International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell insisted that the doubling of aid to countries such as Afghanistan and Yemen would “prevent them becoming terrorist havens.”
Mr Andrew is talking nonsense. Firstly, there are no recorded terrorists of Afghan or Yemen origin having carried out attacks in Britain, and secondly, it has been proven over and over again that the vast majority of foreign-originated terrorist plots against Britain come from Pakistan.
At the same time as the increase in foreign aid was announced, Mr Osborne cut an extra £7 billion from welfare benefits, upped the pension age was hiked for five million workers and announced that nearly 500,000 British civil servants would lose their jobs.
In addition, rail fares will increase by 40 percent as subsidies are withdrawn, and prison and police budgets will be cut by up to 20 percent.
Another £200 million has been set aside for off-shore wind farms, £1 billion for a “Green Bank” and a further £1 billion for other environmental schemes including “a commercial scale carbon capture and storage project.”
Treasury figures showed that average earners on annual salaries around £24,000 will suffer the most from the cuts, despite Mr Osborne and David Cameron claiming that the cuts are “fair.”
