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STEVE RUSH
Foreign Aid is charity,
and as such, should be
paid only when affordable and to those who
need it!!! After all nobody would borrow
money and give it away
to people they did not
know – or would they?

too does our commitment to increase foreign aid payments.

This increased payment
is not because there is
more poverty in the
world, but because the
UK has improved its
own economy. Surely a
real assessment of need
would make more
sense. The UK governDavid Cameron has
ment still borrows bilpledged the UK will
spend 0.7% of GDP on lions of pounds each
foreign aid. Currently month but, as growth
increases, we need to
that means we send
borrow even more in
£11.2billion to other
countries. Can we af- order to give it away!!!
ford it, does it go to
those it is intended to We are ‘all in it tohelp and is the money gether’ – some more so
always put to good use? than others but, most
have made sacrifices in
As the UK is still reli- an effort to get our
economy back on track.
ant on billions of
pounds of monthly bor- So where are we sendrowing, questions need ing the fruits of those
sacrifices?
asking about how we
can afford to send
£11.2billion overseas. One of the biggest ecoBut a bigger problem nomic cutbacks has
looms. The amount of taken place within the
armed forces. They
Foreign Aid we dispatch abroad is linked have had to endure
to the economy. As the thousands of redundanUK economy grows so cies. This has saved the

UK millions of pounds
and is one of the major
contributors to our economic revival. You
might find it ironic (or
just plain stupid) when
you learn that
£9million of this
money has been given
in aid to Argentina.
That’s the same Argentina who are again
cranking up hostilities
over the Falklands and
as a member of the
G20, considered to be a
relatively wealthy
country.
Only last month ‘call
me Dave’ was accusing
Argentina of ‘shameful’
attempts to bully the islands. We know the islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain
British in a referendum
last year, but with all
the cutbacks endured
by the armed forces,
what certainties are
there we can defend the
Falklands if Argentina
decides to invade again.