From the BBC:
A Roman Catholic cardinal has accused the UK government of operating an "anti-Christian foreign policy".
Cardinal Keith O'Brien has attacked plans to increase aid to Pakistan to more than £445m, without any commitment to religious freedom for Christians. Speaking in Glasgow, Cardinal O'Brien called on Foreign Secretary William Hague to seek human rights guarantees...
The cardinal's call came as a report by Vatican-approved agency Aid to the Church in Need suggested 75% of religious persecution around the world is directed against Christians, affecting 100 million people.
Hard to disagree with any of that.
Game Over
10 minutes ago
9 comments:
Of course there's no committment to religious freedom. The £445M is a) bribes, b) money to be spent on manufactured goods from the UK (mostly arms) and c) money to be spent on UK conslutants, all in order to get Pakistan's help in our totally pointless war with the Afghans. Also, I suspect, there's a fair amount of a) - c) not connected with the war as well. I'd be amazed if any of it actually went to help the poor; that's the job of organisations like Oxfam.
B, of course none of it goes to the poor and of course all of it is bribes, but if we are to bribe them, why not bribe them to do something that we believe in?
But we are bribing them to do something we (or the Gov't) believes in very strongly: giving money to UK big business.
MW
I think we had this discussion before when I held the overseas aid portfolio in your cabinet.
The sensible thing is to cut out the middleman. If the money is available in the DfID budget then (1) pay a small commission direct into the relevant Pakistani minister's Swiss bank account - which will keep the ostensible aid recipients' quiet; (2) buy arms from the UK manufacturer and (3) supply said arms to our own army.
That way the "aid" budget can be used for our own defence. The jobs created/preserved are UK jobs and the political difficulties of expenditure on our defence are avoided. It's win-win!
U, you still are Foreign Minister, and this thread did remind me of your earlier (and eminently sensible) policy proposals.
I'm not convinced by the final paragraph. "RCC report says that people are being mean to the poor Christians" is up there with "RCC report says that Pope is Catholic".
JB, sure "Well he would say that wouldn't he?" but under U's admirable scheme, I don't see why we can't make that commission payment (a) conditional on them being a bit nicer to Christians.
Shouldn't we be suing the effers for breaching our IPR on the gas centrifuges for uranium isotope separation? (I take it that the IPR belonged to us, the Krauts and Johnny Dutchman.)
I tend to agree. I disagree with the large number of people who say we should not be giving aid to India because they have a space programme. If aid were really meant to do good it should be given to those states likely to use it to achieve economic success. That is India not Pakistan. It seems more likely aid is given for purely political reasons. If, beyond that, it is given to nasty, incompetent societies in preference to decent ones that don't cause trouble then we risk getting more of what we are paying for.
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