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Wednesday 16 February 2011

UK Foreign Aid Scandal: The Financial Times Parrots the British National Party

Foreign Aid Scandal: The Financial Times Parrots the British National Party

The increasing acceptance of the legitimacy of the British National Party’s political message has been confirmed once again with an article in the London Financial Times (FT) complaining about foreign aid to nuclear-power India.
In an article headed “UK to give £1bn to India in spite of cuts,” the FT reported that a “review of UK aid policy is to maintain more than £1 billion of help for India, in spite of the nuclear-armed state’s rapid emergence as a world power with its own aid and space programme.”
Written as if it had been copied verbatim off the British National Party’s website (where the topic of the foreign aid scandal was first raised), the FT article confirmed that British “aid” to India would amount to £280 million every year to at least 2015.
Actually, the FT’s estimate of £1 billion is an understatement. Annual payments of £280 million will mean that between 2010 and 2015, the British taxpayer will hand over £1.4 billion to India.
According to the Office for National Statistics, in the financial year 2009/10 the UK recorded general government net borrowing of £159.8 billion, which was equivalent to 11.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).
This means that the foreign aid grant to India alone is nearly 1 percent of Britain’s deficit. It also means that the total annual foreign aid budget makes up 7.58 percent of Britain deficit.
“India is growing at 8.5 per cent a year, gives aid to Africa, boasts more than 126,000 US dollar millionaires and is one of only six nations with satellite launch capability,” the FT article continued.
Moving on to quote International Development Minister Andrew Mitchell, the FT said that India was a “development paradox.”
Mr Mitchell was quoted in the article as saying that “Some people in both the UK and India have been asking whether the time has come to end British aid to India. In my view we are not there yet.”
Mr Mitchell also revealed to the FT that Ethiopia will shortly become the recipient of “Britain’s biggest bilateral aid programme.”
There is no justification whatsoever for British taxpayers to have to go into debt to give “aid” to India.
The Indian economy is already the eleventh largest in the world by nominal Gross Domestic Product and the fourth largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). Economists have predicted that by 2020, India will be among the leading economies of the world.
Furthermore, India possesses nuclear weapons and maintains short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, nuclear-capable aircraft, surface ships, and will acquire the Arihant class of nuclear-powered submarines in 2012.
Unlike Iran, India is not a signatory to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Intelligence estimates are that it has around 95 nuclear weapons and enough weapons-grade plutonium for a further 110.
The British National Party is the only political party to have consistently called for an end to all foreign aid while there is poverty and social deprivation in Britain.
It is time to put the British people first, and it is encouraging to see the FT at last waking up to this simple, reasonable and righteous demand.
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