Excellent.
That promised £160 million per year = slightly less than £1 per capita, assuming that most of it reaches its destination (which it won't, it will get siphoned off along the way).
And let's assume that the money does reach its destination: if the Pakistani government doesn't have to worry so much about feeding or educating its population, they'll have more money to spend on weapons and terrorist training.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
"Britain doubles aid to Pakistan"
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6 comments:
MW
You make a very good, if indirect, point; namely, the more we take care of the nourishment and education of Pakistan's (and India's and Africa's) population, the more is released for their governments to spend elsewhere. In reality, the lion's share of all aid probably ends up in Switzerland. Since we already know this, maybe now would be a good time to cut out the middleman.
There should be a register (set up under the aegis of the UN, of course) by which each member of government of those countries receiving aid nominates a bank account to which aid donors can transfer the aid money direct. This would have the effect of (1) being able to reduce the staff of the DFID to three: a doorman, a bookeeper and someone to change the lightbulbs, and (2) making the whole aid scam completely transparent.
To be fair to Switerland, not all of it ends up in numbered bank accounts - a lot of it is spent on weapons, of which Britain is the world's largest exporter. So you'd need a fourth guy to organise bulk orders direct to Zanu-PF, the Taleban etc.
MW
Points taken: but I don't think we can assume that the arms money never actually leaves Barclays, Leadenhall Street branch and simply moves from the DFID account to the BAE account without being diverted (and diminished) through UBS, Zurich. After all, the customers must be "encouraged" to order from BAE in the first place or, and this makes sense (and might actually happen), we supply the hardware direct and not the wherewithall to purchase the hardware. Agreed then; a fourth guy to see that the bribee stays bribed and/or that BAE actually delivers the goods (bit complicated that especially for civil servants with a double first from Cambridge but no experience of the real world - maybe two guys).
BTW Switzerland is becoming a bit of a leaky sieve where bank secrecy is concerned. There are other, more secretive and discreet, jurisdictions. However, I'm sure those advising the top people at the African Union know all about them.
If we strip this down to its basics, the DFID could just split the money two ways - part of it goes to the dictator's London bank account (cutting out the Swiss) and part of it goes to BAE as corporate welfare. Whether they deliver the weapons is by-the-by; they only end up being used to kill and oppress people.
In fact, DFID could divert those weapons to our own armed forces. So instead of booking £x billion as 'defence' expenditure, we could book it as 'third world aid to Afghanistan/Iraq/wherever'.
As usual, you've got to the nub of the issue. Your suggestion is a plus for almost everybody except (1) the taxpayer (but even s/he does marginally better as long as the DFID is heavily filleted) and (2) the civil "service" (unless the surplus DFID staff are just shifted back to the FCO).
U, we got there together!
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