Charity Begins at Home Mr Prime Minister

What would you say if David Cameron announced that he is pouring £7.8 billion into the country’s coffers rising to £12.6 by 2014 to be spent on improving the plight of the poor, improving the NHS and higher education along with the national transport system in THIS country? Like me you might say, “Blimey, we must be out of recession or hang on a minute where’s it coming from. We’re supposed to be broke as a country.”

Well, according to a leaked document £7.8 billion was our total UK foreign aid bill and if that isn’t bad enough it is set to rise to £12.6 billion by 2014. That’s £479 per household!! I can think of better ways I’d like my taxes to be spent. The good news is that the UK government is freezing foreign aid to India to only £295 million.

Why, oh why are we giving £295 million to one of the fastest growing economies in the world? The economy in India grew a massive amount last year at just below 10% and is set to grow 9% in 2012. India spends £35 billion on defence and £750 million on their space programme. It seems as though we are helping to fund these projects. India is, in fact, a foreign aid donor too. They gave over £300 million to poorer countries last year, we are giving away £7.8 billion. The Indian government is planning to spend $1trillion over the next five years upgrading the country’s infrastructure.

The UK’s foreign aid budget is two times as much as the total cutbacks on University spending. This could very well cripple higher education in this country. Already some universities, Exeter the latest, have said that they will be charging the maximum of £9000 tuition.

Excuse me Prime Minister wouldn’t you be better off spending the money on your own people?

I think that charity should begin at home and considering the mess we are in here in the UK I cannot understand why we are in fact borrowing money – to give to countries that are growing at an astronomical rate and will leave us behind in their dust or others that are totally corrupt.

The one good bit of news is that we are no longer going to send aid to Russia and China who individually have more millionaires and billionaires than we could ever dream of.