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Friday 11 February 2011

Bankrupt UK Dishes Out Half a Billion Pounds in Foreign Aid in First 5 Weeks of 2011

Bankrupt Britain Dishes Out Half a Billion Pounds in Foreign Aid in First 5 Weeks of 2011

Bankrupt Britain has dished out just on half a billion pounds in foreign aid in the first five weeks of 2011, as British taxpayers staggered under a wave of price and tax increases, job losses and cutbacks which threaten to put millions on the dole in this country.
The staggering foreign aid spend includes projects such as the “promotion of free trade in Africa” (£78 million); help to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (£110 million); a tripling of aid to Somalia (in excess of £126 million); a £40 million donation to the world anti-polio initiative (set to become an annual donation); £134 million in aid to Pakistan; and £55 million in aid to the Sudan.
The grand total comes to £483 million, but when administration costs and logistics are factored in, the final cost to the British taxpayer will be well in excess of half a billion pounds.
The figures and details of the spending spree are contained in a series of press releases issued by the Department for International Development, all of which were of course ignored by the controlled media.
By way of comparison, England's university budgets have been cut by £449 million, which will cause student places to be reduced by an estimated 6,000 in the next academic year.
Teaching budgets in Britain have been reduced by £215 million, while research funding has been frozen and the buildings budget has been cut by £562 million, or 25 percent.
The spending cuts, supposedly to “bring the deficit” under control are so far-reaching that even flood defence systems in Britain have been cut – ironic when it is considered that a large amount of the foreign aid paid out to Pakistan recently has gone to flood relief aid.
According to the Environment Agency, 20 percent of houses in Britain are “at risk of flooding” but more than 1,000 major flood defence projects in Britain have had their funding cut as a result of “budget cutbacks.”
From figures published by the Office National Statistics in October last year, UK public sector net debt was £952.8 billion or 64.6 percent of National Gross Domestic Product (GDP ).
The PBR (annual government borrowing) forecast for 2010/11 is for net borrowing of £149 billion, or 12.6 percent of GDP.
This means that each month, the Government is set to borrow in excess of £12 billion just to stay afloat: and of this, it seems, at least half a billion (and possibly more) is then spent on foreign aid.