British tax payers money on Aid for Africa while the government rations and refuses Cancer drugs treatment to UK taxpayers?

How much money do you need to live on, BB?

Why are you selfishly and greedily holding on to anything more than you actually need when that money could go to helping others?

Did I not read this correctly but without the drugs they don't get to live at all?
If there is not enough cash to honour its comittments to the British public there is no case for foreign aid beyond whatever the individual cares to donate.
If a person pays in for unemployment benefit and gets none because he saved for retirement or a pension and gets only two thirds of it or medical care and gets short changed, then Africa, deserving or not should not enter into the queue .
At college when I was young only three students had new cars. Two of these were African and boasted that it they were bought with money liberated from aid programs. Sweden demanded that further aid be conditional on corruption being sorted first. We should be the same but British governments love to tax and squander.
Africa like China has low cost labour so why is it not one of the great manufacturing centres of the world? In a word corruption.
For forty years I have donated mostly grudgingly towards African aid and things are worse not better. Perhaps they need to learn self reliance more than they need aid.
Keep the aid for Britain's homeless for a starter.

Graham Added: 10/06/2007 22:21

Once the UK can pay for all the Cancer drug treatments required by the tax paying British Cancer suffers then the rest of the money can go to Africa.

When we hear that the government has no money to pay for cancer drugs and homes for the homeless in Britain but has hundreds of millions for Aid for Africa then as a British tax payer I ask why.

"Charity begins at home".

Agreed, Baz.

I am aware that Webcameron attracts a wide audience but I would also like to think some of the contributers are Conservative back-benchers. The more I read these forums the more I recognise the mountain DC has to climb.
Perhaps the site is being hijacked by the BNP??

What makes you think so, Jordan?

Yorker, no offense intended to you.

Perhaps you saw the photograph in the news of a dying young child. In the background was a vulture (a feathered bird which scavenges on dead corpses) waiting for an inevitable meal. The child died shortly afterwards.

The photographer who took the photograph subsequently commited suicide.

BasilBlogger:



So does selfishness.

Graham, thankyou. I was starting to feel like an unwelcome guest on the new BNP website!! Despite the thread having had over 70 views I was a bit of a lonely voice.

Jordan - Added: 11/06/2007 12:28

"Perhaps if you saw the photograph in the news of a dying mother in the UK. In the background was her child crying because his mother wasn't given life saving cancer drugs because the government could not afford it. The mother died shortly afterwards.

Would you commit sucide?

Jordan - I think BasilBlogger and Yorker have an unrealistic outlook on life - and what they want to have 'happen' will never happen.

Wake up Basil - what have you ever done to make this world a better place?

Whether it's a mother dying of cancer in the UK because they can't get treatment or a mother dying of AIDS in Africa because they can't get treatment, both situations are tragic.
However, whilst a small number of individuals in the UK are denied expensive new cancer treatments, vast numbers of people in Africa die prematurely because of HIV/AIDS, don't have access to clean drinking water, are malnourished etc
To propose that aid which saves countless lives in Africa should be limited due to the fact that small numbers of individuals in the UK are being denied the expensive cancer treatments in question would suggest that you place greater value on the life of one British person than that on the value of the lives of large numbers of African people; a perspective which most people find abhorrent.

In 1989 the then head of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme for Africa) resigned.

In his reignation speech he said

"that since the 1960s the United Nations has been spending a disproportionate amount of effort both in resources, manpower and money to help Africa develop.

Billions had been spent and the result to date has been disappointing. He was resigning because all "that money and effort had nothing to show for it". He said "that Africa's problems had to be solved by the Africans themselves and from within Africa. Until that is recognised then deserts will continue to encroach into agricultural land despite all the effort of the UN projects to stop it.

He said that as far as spending money on Africa's problems "Africa was a bottomless pit" and "the West was encouraging a dependency culture as far as aid to Africa was concerned. Africans will need to learn to help themselves".

He gave the example of Ghana and compared it to Malaysia. "Both were under British colonial rule. On independence the GDP of Ghana was much higher then than that of Malaysia. Yet 10 years later Malaysia had developed at a much faster pace even though both had depended on similar natural resources for their income".

We could quite easily afford to provide proper healthcare, pensions and homes for our own peoiple if we sensible re-prioritised our funding. That would leave cash for worthwhile overseas aid.

We have withdrawn aid to the people of Gaza who are under illegal military siege and dying in the wreckage from malnutrition and lack of medicare, but few people here are making a fuss and our politicians (including the Tories) think it's a super policy.

The NHS has often been described as a bottomless pit too Basil.

MattFeisty - Added: 11/06/2007 16:05

You are right but for my money, if I can physically see a woman here in Britain receive treatment for her breast cancer and live long than to spend my money on some African dictator or African civil servant pocket my aid.

I think most British people if asked see it my way!

By the same token, I assume you would prefer to see on the news that the lives of large number of African people have been saved through an effective aid distribution programme rather than wasted on NHS bureaucracy. Please confirm that this is the case.


This website, whilst an "open-church", by virtue of its nature attracts more than its fair share of people with fairly right wing political viewpoints - those who arguably may be most persuaded by your arguments. In reality, your post has received limited support, widespread objection and others who hint that they are "conservative" are discussing elsewhere the argument that certain posts in the forum are racist and should be taken down.

Matt I have in my previous post quote the head of the United Nations Development Programme who disenchanted with the way development aid in Africa was being used became disillusioned with the whole idea and resigned.

As he said since the early 1960s billions has been spent on Aid to Africa and what have we to show for it? Amin, Mugabe, Rewanda, the killing fields of the Congo, corruption in Kenya etc.... etc.... etc... to name but a few.

Please tell me of an "an effective aid distribution programme in Africa" that you know of?

Even the Catholic Church which ran schools and hospitals in Africa has now pulled out because it was to dangerous for the nuns to work there.

Basil, I am an Oxfam supporter and regularly receive positive bulletins from them about how aid programmes can make a difference. But your perhaps valid criticisms of the way aid in Africa is sometimes squandered under corrupt governments etc are a far cry from your original assertion that people in Africa should not receive aid at all so long as people in the UK are being denied expensive cancer drugs.

Thank you for pointing that out Mattfeisty. You are, of course, spot on.
It was African aid vs cancer treatment in th UK.
No mention of 'corruption'.

I and my mother used to support Oxfam until we saw the money they spent on their new lavish multi-millons pounds headquarters building. It is along the lines that the likes of IBM and Microsoft would spend! I would have thought the amount of money they spent on their new HQ would have feed a million Africans.

That's were your money is going!

....whereas the NHS and leading cancer charities of course all operate out of somebody's garden shed don't they Basil?

Personally, I think that all financial aid to Africa should stop.

Over the past decades, Africa has been given billions and billions in financial aid, yet for most part Africa is still on square one.

Why? Well because the billions and billions in financial aid that Africa has been given, the majority of it has been stolen by corrupt African dictators and their cronies and put into their Swiss bank accounts, so they can live the life of luxury whilst their peoples continue to languish in poverty.

Instead of giving financial aid to Africa, I think non-transferable grants should be given instead, grants for the building of schools, hospitals, clean water plants, job training and skills, housing etc.

The grants would be non-transferable, meaning that those grants could only be used for the specific project that they're issued for and wouldn't be able to be sold on the black market by corrupt leaders in exchange for money.

Every say, six months outside bodies could visit the various African countries to see how well the building and whatnot is coming along, keep tabs on them all, so to speak.

Half of Africa is living in poverty, it's really unacceptable in 2007 that many of the Africans are still living in mud huts, have no clean water and are with inadequate food and health facilities, they might as well still be living in the Middle Ages.

I think it's obvious that throwing money at Africa hasn't actually helped Africa, so I think it's time for a radical rethink on how Africa is assisted by the West, and my solution is to ditch throwing money at them and issue them grants instead.

Maybe Africa ought to be allowed to reach melt-down? No matter what we do the suffering goes on anyway.

Ah, so that's unlike the huge amounts which are going to be pocketed by the people who are going to profit from the NHS and other Private Finance Initiatives...?

http://www.newstatesman.com/199910180018

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/20/npfi20.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/06/nhs06.xml

Graham, don't be knocked off course on this one, you are spot on.
All judgements to do with spending have to be balanced against the bigger picture.
Personally I rarely give money to "charity at home" as I appreciate that the same money would go a lot further abroad.
People that say that financial pressure should be eliminated on the NHS before letting cash go to Africa don't see that these problems are relative.
Of course these same people could kerb their own lifestyle in order to support cancer care through research etc, but you'll probally find they do a balancing act of their own and decide not to.

Every time someone suggests it is not a good idea to throw good money down the drain on a particular issue they are accused of being BNP supporters. Can we assume then that they are the party with sensible practical economic policies with the interests of the British taxpayer at heart and no longer need to be demonised?

RoverDC:



Hmm, nobody's yet suggested I'm a BNP supporter for pointing out that the PFI scheme is throwing good money down the drain...

That can easily be corrected.
Seriously though, aid for Africa has come at the expense of those in the 10% tax bracket i.e. the poorest workers who have seen that band eliminated and their tax rate doubled. I do not believe that many of them would feel delighted at the prospect that they were giving up every luxury they currently get to help Africans in need.
Of the parties anyone has heard of the BNP is the only one that would put a limit and strict conditions on foreign aid which to those in that financial bracket would be the right thing to do. Comparison with the BNP is therefore the best advertising that party could wish for and I am sure they are truly grateful to you all. In their shoes I would be.
Please , only those in that financial bracket and no prospect of leaving it argue against as you do not have the contact or experience to argue.
African aid transfers money from the poor in rich countries to the rich in poor countries and should be stopped ASAP.

This is a no brainer to me. As long as British givernments plead that they cannot afford extra schools/hospitals/infantry regiments, whatever, they have no business handing over our tax money to foreign countries. We elect a goverment to look after our own interests and unless it can be proven that handing over taxpayers money to foreign countries beneifts this country it shouldn't happen at all

ThatcherLoyalist:



Yep, you definitely have got the right user name!

And the right idea according to those who are actually going to pay. The poorest without influence to keep their taxes down.

I’m glad a fair few people on here think BasilBlogger has got this wrong. That is very much my view too.

Ensuring the speedy take-up of new medicines in the NHS is extremely important, and for a while now Andrew Lansley has been putting forward suggestions to enable the NHS and drug companies to share the risks and benefits of new medicines as they are brought into use.

But whatever the ins and outs of this process, I don’t think the problem is an overall lack of money being spent on the NHS. Funding has - rightly - increased substantially in recent years. This year about £90 billion is being spent. By contrast, the DfID budget this year is £5 billion.

My Party has a policy of increasing spending on international development to reach 0.7 per cent of national income by 2013. But even then the figure would still be dwarfed by spending on the NHS.

So I don’t think you can compare the two in the way BasilBlogger suggests. And nor do I believe our responsibility to others stops at Dover. Let me give you two reasons why.

First and foremost, a moral one. It would be simply unacceptable to sit back and watch billions of people live in dire and degrading poverty while we have the means to help them – both the financial means and the benefit of our own experience in creating wealth.

Second, a practical one. Today’s world is smaller than ever before. People can communicate more easily, travel and migrate more easily, and understand more easily how events in one part of the world affect those living in entirely different parts of the world. It is in our enlightened self-interest to help stimulate development and relieve poverty.

People in Britain recognise this. You just need to look at the success of campaigns like Make Poverty History and Live 8 – and the quite staggering response to the Tsunami - to see the depth of feeling. As these campaigns show, people recognise we all have a responsibility to act – individuals, charities, and governments too.

Some on this thread have made the point that we need to make sure our aid is spent effectively. That is of course true. Britain has quite a good record in this regard. But in Parliament recently I repeated Andrew Mitchell’s call for an independent international body to measure and compare the impact and effectiveness of aid and drive up standards, so everyone achieves value for money in the aid they spend. But making this point is no reason to question the principle of aid, as some on here seem to be doing.

In short there really isn’t the trade off that BasilBlogger implies between fulfilling our responsibilities to people at home and abroad. Indeed, I think the two often go together – a society which cares more about what happens to people on the other side of the world will often care more about people on the other side of the street as well.

David Cameron - Basil often gets it wrong! LoL