Brits want to give money abroad – but not necessarily via the government

langbourner

That chart is almost meaningless as it does not take population size or national income into account.

Verity

I don't think the Brits do want to send money abroad. I think they are sick of pouring wealth that this country has created down the maws of people too stupid to help themselves.

Africa, which is probably the most stupid group of countries, should get no aid at all. They're the richest continent on the planet. Let them figure out how to pay for their own over-population. Let them figure out how to get everyone educated. Let them figure out the health issues and teach them in schools. Let them figure out how to mine their minerals and farm their vast agriculturally suitable land.

The notion of people in a group of tiny, often harshly cold, islands in the North Seas supporting the vastness and huge population of the richest continent on Earth is ridiculous.

If I were PM, I would announced that there would be no further AID. I might give a dozen scholarships to the very brightest so they could go back and sort out their own vastly rich continent, but that would be it.

Africans should be rolling in clover. Instead, they make a profession of the begging bowl and twitting the West in the ridiculous UN (which should be wound down) for not giving enough.

Read PJ O'Rourke sometime on the difference between (I think it was) Tanazania and the then self-governing Hong Kong, which had about 426 sq miles, most of it recovered, through their own efforts, from the sea.)

We need the money at home. Stop all foreign aid. (I must confess I would make an exception in India's case as 1) they're one of us and 2) when they're properly on their feet they will produce wealth untold.)

Norman Dee

2 points, giving money via governments is rightly seen as paying off corrupt ministers in foreign countries, money to honest agencies may actually have the desired effect.
2. Following on from that, I fear that the parts of the populations that normally get the attention of the agencies are those the host state have no interest in saving anyway. Take India for instance, with an enormous, and growing population of illiterate peasants I suspect their heart is not in saving thousands more simply so they can grow up to be a burden on the state. Ultra cynical maybe, but with all the money India spends on Weaponry and space programmes they should be able to have a bigger impact on their own poverty. Why don't they ? simple they don't care in the long run. Most will die young and India is too busy being a 21st century country to worry about it's 16th century regions

Yam Yam

"A well-targeted aid budget is essential if Britain is to punch above its weight on the world stage."

Maybe. But possessing a balanced and well-resourced armed forces is even better.

strapworld

langbourne, do you have to have everything explained? I find the graph extremely helpful.

Excellent article Mr Hoskins. I do agree with you Yam Yam. National Security OUR National Security must come first.

But Cameron in less than a year has caught the 'world player' bug. Now talking of sending in troops. I thought he said on more than one occasion that he would not act like Blair?

Home is where action is needed first, once the deficit and defence is sorted out then, perhaps, he should be allowed out. Seize the madman's passport immediately.

strapworld

Verity, I find it rich that we are giving so much to Africa, when most of the countries on that continent are controlled by China.

Rabyrover

Why does anyone want to punch above their weight on this issue?

oldtimer

The Coalition`s arguments for increasing the Aid budget to 0.7% fail to convince. At best it should be capped at the 2010 cash level. Cutting the deficit is more important by far. Defence of the realm is more important by far.

Perry

Indeed I DO NOT want my money contaminated by government or any other hands!

When I do give money (abroad) it goes directly to the people who will use it directly for the purposes for which I gave it. I know the place, the people, the need.

Any other giving has been abandoned. I am sick of expensive TV ads, governnment agency fiddles, high salaries, and unnaccountable people. Away with them all, shame on them, and damn their hides!

Pete Hoskin

langbourner: per capita figures added above to account for population size.

Perry

@ strapworld - "I thought he said on more than one occasion that he would not act like Blair?"

How else can the 'Heir to Blair' behave?

RobertD

instead of large amounts of government directed aid to support convenient thugs running parts of the world, let's do it the Big Society way, people driven aid. If charities and countries can persuade individuals in the UK of the merits of their case so that the people are prepared to donate their own money, then the government should match that donation with taxpayer money. If they can't persuade the man and woman in the street of their need and ability to use the money wisely then the government does not need to give anything.

Verity

Strapworld - I don't know that the Africans of any country on that continent are controlled by China - yet. The Chinese are certainly there (the Africn should get down on their knees and thank their dieties for this good fortune), but I don't think they're yet in control.

When they are - and it's a matter of time - they won't be losing face by asking assisance (unneeded assistance at that) from the West. They'll be too busy rolling in clover and making ever greater fortunes hand over fist. And good luck to them.

(Handouts to non-producers will be a thing of the past, so the grossly overweight Mrs Mugabe will have to look elsewhere for shoe money. As an aside, I always wondered why she chose to specialise in shoe collections, given that she can't see her own feet.)

BTW, maybe they could impose the "one child" only policy in the countries where they will, effectively, rule.

As an aside, I note that the Chinese now have a "one-dog" policy.

Rosie

I am reliably informed that millions from the DfID budget goes to trade unions in this country, who prmptly give most of it to the Labour Party. Why on earth is this allowed? It doesn't make sense.

Rosie

Sorry, mis-typed 'promptly'

yank

"One component that's often left out of the debate is how much charitable giving the British public does anyway, even without the state as middle man. According to the latest figures, we are second only behind America in the amounts that we donate abroad:"

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Mr. Hoskin, the GHA chart you show reflects public money, not private charity. So the chart does reflect a "middle man", and is coerced aid, in contrast with the premise of your blogpost. The $4B figure shown is for US public humanitarian assistance, for example.

If you're looking for US private international charity, freely donated, it'd look something like this:

"When it comes to international aid, Americans long have preferred to donate their money through the private sector or to private charities rather than relying on government. The $115.9 billion provided by private foundations, corporations, voluntary organizations, universities, religious organizations and individual Americans in 2007, the most current data available, is more than five times the $21.8 billion of official aid provided by the U.S. government, according to CGP."

http://www.america.gov/st/educ-english/2009/June/200906171016181CJsamohT0.6031.html

In2minds

Everybody wants to send money abroad, Gaddafi has got piles of money in London!

Ron Whitehand

The government could use micro-loan agencies that have a good track record of supporting the local people who really need the cash and are willing to help themselves. Kiva is one such charity/micro-bank which seems to work very well.
The down side is that one is doing good by 'minute particulars' and this may not get the political kudos of the grand schemes beloved by politicians.

Cynic

I have roamed around much of sub saharan Africa on aid projects. A chronicle of largely (but not entirely) wasted time.

There are only two kinds of aid I percive as working to some extent. Improving public administration at the top and wells for water, a cow or a couple of goats at the bottom. (and please give them to and empower, the women).

We have poured money into many African countries for years and years, it is two steps forward and one back, sometimes two back. It is very depressing. Corruption bleeds these countries. Nowhere worse than Zimbabwe. There IS a tyrant who needs overthrowing. The people are wonderful.

The cynics definition of foreign aid is taking money from poor people in rich countries to give to rich people in poor countries.

langbourner

Thanks Pete. Agree with the thrust of the article, but not with some of the hysterical comments that follow.

Blofeld's Cat

What Verity said.

Apart from 'dieties' (which is what I need to go on)

Verity

In2Minds - Ha ha ha ha ha ha! And I'm certain Mugabe, and many other Africans and Arabs, sends vast bundles overseas to Switzerland. As you note, funny that.

Bob F

Bluntly I don't give to anything that involves animals or Cape to Cairo. I subscribe to Shelterbox for disaster relief but apart from that forget it.

DZ

Cynic@4.32, right on the ball there, the voice of experience. Especially the point about empowering the women. In the country where I work on and off, the President set up a micro-finance investment bank for women and it was/is a huge success, bringing benefit to the rural population especially.

Pete Hoskin

Yank: thank you. The original graphs were a strange amalgam of some public, some individual donations - a bad oversight on our part. I've updated the post with graphs that use the "private giving" figures from the latest version of that report you referenced. The point of the post stands. Thank you, again.

Pete Hoskin

langbourner: no problem. Updated graphs above, btw - they support my case even better.

Boudicca

On the other hand, since the Coalition decided to ring-fence aid whilst cutting spending here - I no longer contribute voluntarily to any overseas charities, or any here which pay for immigrants and asylum seekers to sponge off the British people.

Barry Bilge

"A well-targeted aid budget is essential if Britain is to punch above its weight on the world stage." said Tim Montgomerie.

What if the public don't give a stuff about politicians strutting about the globe?

"This is, if you like, a Big Society solution to the aid question: people deciding whom to give their money to, and no doubt getting better results than government transfers ever could. Which is why it's striking that the coalition has such a centralised view of aid spending, as typified by the 0.7 per cent target." Said Peter Hoskin.

Absolutely, Peter! Leave the money in our pockets and let us decide what is right to receive our support. Otherwise you have politicians taking credit for spending *our* money on things *we* might not want it spending on.

Tim also said: "the price of a tall chai latte vaccinates ten children against polio".

Doubt it. The end user cost of ten vaccinations might well be the price of a poncey drink but without freely given donations keeping charities reasonably honest and efficient the actual cost of getting the money from my pocket and turning it into ten vaccinations administered in far flung places is likely to be much higher. What is it about, for example, the vaccines that makes it acceptable to force taxpayers to pay for them when it would be unacceptable to force them to buy the coffee?

Edward McLaughlin

langbourner

Yeah right, it's hysterical to question why, in our current difficulties, it might be a good idea to stop borrowing money as a nation, so that we can give it away to nations which make money at an ever-increasing rate.

Baron

Verity's right. Africa, amongst the inhabited continents, has the most fertile soil, yet it’s the only continent that cannot feed itself. It produced by the end of the last century less food than it did when the nasty colonial powers ruled. What killed Africa has been our aid.

Verity

Well, we've given washing unimaginable amounts of charity into Africa around 40 or 50 years, and the Africans, living on the richest continent in the world, are still dependent on charity.

How about we stop the charity and see what happens?

I heart Vezza

If Verity were PM I'd be strewing rose petals at the gates of Downing Street.

This piece of her prose was wintry and magnificent.
"The notion of people in a group of tiny, often harshly cold, islands in the North Seas supporting the vastness and huge population of the richest continent on Earth is ridiculous."

Stirred the same emotions in me as Rutger Hauer's replicant's dying speech in Blade Runner. I'm going to make it into a bumper sticker.

yank

Pete Hoskin
March 1st, 2011 5:53pm

"I've updated the post with graphs that use the "private giving" figures from the latest version of that report you referenced. The point of the post stands."

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Mr. Hoskin,

You didn't update from the site I referenced and quoted, because that showed 2007 private US donations as $115.9B, almost three times the $37B shown in your graph. And per capita US contributions would then come out at $380 or so, again, three times that shown in your graph.

The point of your post stands, I'd agree, that the UK blows away about every nation in the world in uncoerced, international charitable donations. Be nice if the rest would catch up.

Noa.

Poverty will never be cured, or even ameliorated, by hypocritical and undemocratic politicians taking our money to give to their foreign counterparts.

MOE

Just seen Mitchell on Newsnight. He's so dug in on this postion that he wouldn't accept reality if it dropped a 1000 pounder on his bonce.

I bet he has trouble with that shaving mirror though. In the Whitehall game pissing our taxes up the wall is his primary measure of effect. He's doing rather well at that.

Steve Tierney

When money is taken by compulsion and then given away that is not charity.

For it to be charity, it needs to be a voluntary offer made.

Kayode Samuel

There appears to be a neat quid pro quo at work here. The money comes to Africa and is promptly stolen by rulers who then return the cash to their western bank accounts. So who's complaining? The poor in both places. Can someone please do a passable evaluation of the impact of official aid in 50 years of African independence?

Tarka the Rotter

Billions spent in overseas aid - no obvious benefits for the poor are still with us. Millions spent on regeneration projects at home - ah yes, the poor are still with us. Thirteen years of a socialist administration dedicated to overturning poverty and equality etc etc - yup, the poor are still with us (living in sink estates and dutifully re-electing Labour councils). Shurely shome mishtake...

TrevorsDen

Yam Yam - punching above pour weight with armed forced involved killing our soldiers.
How many a year do you want to kill in the name of altruism?

The govt are changing the use of the DfD budget to one based on pursuing British interests.
Its seems the only way the loony tunes want to pursue British interests is to kill British soldiers.

As we pull troops out of Afghanistan we are upping our aid.
Aid elsewhere might mean no troops engaged in the first place.

You can make arguments for Iraq and Afghanistan but I fail to see the necessity for us to increase our armed forces with a view to interfering left right and centre.

The USA are cutting 15000 from the US marines.
So at a time when the USA is losing interest in intervention we are told by the loony tunes that we should cut aid and increase defence and kill more of our soldiers.

On the assumption that we do not use our troops then what use are they?
We have extra thousands sitting in barracks and lost influence through zero aid.

Clever

Kenyan

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. For fifty years, trillions of dollars have been donated in the name of aid to the "poor" african nations with the money being stashed back abroad by corrupt leaders while the poor peasant is left with the burden of payment the debts. So who's insane here - the donor or the recipient. And who's the recipient - the poor peasant or the corrupt leaders? Do we have corrupt "givers"? While the UN uses billions of dollars and posts a human development index each year for different countries, one wonders if any impact evaluation is ever done. Do the Brit tax payers ask their PM for evaluation reports? Why continue giving charity to a beggar who will never leave the street, put down his bowl or even change his tattered clothes and dirty looks? @Verity - we are not a stupid group of countries but we sure do have greedy and selfish leaders. I would recommend that aid is stopped and governments tasked with the responsibility of using well their taxes and rich resources.