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The Spectator Podcast: Aid isn’t working

On this week’s podcast, we consider how refugees could be better aided, whether David Cameron might be envious of George Osborne’s ‘retirement’, and why getting trolled can be good for your career.

First, as the government ends the Dubs amendment scheme, we ask whether there are better solutions to the refugee crisis. Paul Collier writes this week’s cover piece, arguing against camps and in favour of getting refugees into jobs, as soon as humanely possible. Paul joins the podcast this week, along with Kevin Watkins CEO of Save the Children. As Paul writes in the magazine:

“Refugees nowadays do not have the luxury of a short-term solution. The problems they are fleeing are likely to last for a very long time. Imagine yourself in their position, displaced with your family. Would you really resign yourself to years in a refugee camp, living off food tokens, housed in a converted container? Most Syrians, indeed most refugees globally, choose to ignore the whole international support system. They head for the cities and try to find work there, even if they have to do it illegally. Understanding why they do this is not difficult. Their priority, just as yours would be, is to restore autonomy”

Kevin Watkins responds that:

“What the article draws attention to is two fundamental failings, which is, firstly, we have a system which is really just geared towards short-term food and shelter, and refugees have a right to expect more than that, and, secondly, there are rules governing what refugees are allowed to do in neighbouring countries with respect to work. So, people are not allowed to work their way back into a decent autonomous lifestyle.”

Next, we consider the respective retirements of two prematurely sidelined politicians: David Cameron and George Osborne. Is Cameron watching on jealously from his Oxfordshire pile, as his sidekick Osborne scoops the top job at the London Evening Standard? Or does he have his own Blairesque comeback in the works? Stephen Robinson tackles

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