A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Monday, February 28, 2011

The targeting of aid

Interesting to see which countries have been chopped from the UK's aid budget:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/feb/27/uk-aid-budget-andrew-mitchell?INTCMP=SRCH

I can understand why China isn't on it anymore, but what justification is there for stopping aid to Cambodia?

A snapshot of the need for development aid there is provided by this quote Feb 2011 from MediaGlobal:

"Cambodia is one the poorest countries in the world, with an estimated annual GDP per capita of US $783 in 2010 and a Human Development Index rank of 124 out of 169 countries in 2010, which is below the regional average of East Asia and the Pacific. Many Cambodians live in desperate economic need, families have limited resources and social inequality is high. Such conditions add greatly to the likelihood of commercial sexual exploitation, leaving Cambodian children especially vulnerable."

If I am to understand the UK Government's policy correctly, it matters not to Andrew Mitchell's aid criteria that huge numbers of Khmer children may not go to school or have enough to eat but they don't qualify for UK cash because the country does not pose a security threat to us in the UK. Charming.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now that the chickens are coming home to roost, I guess you must be shocked and ashamed with the behaviour of the last Labour government towards Libya.

6:40 pm, February 28, 2011

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You must be joking Anon. Ashamed, unlikely for it will be the bankers fault like everything else. The last Labour government was just unlucky over the timing of the world recession, the uncontrolled immigration was down to the Tories scaremongering and they really thought Gadaffi had turned from the dark side.

6:24 pm, March 01, 2011

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You could arguee Blairs visit to libya saved thousands of lives

because terrorism from Libya stopped

Good to see Cameron selling gas and rubber bullets to the Libyans late last year

and trying flying to the middle east with gun runners/arms traders to sell weapons to dicatators in the middle east before they collapse

How sick

10:59 pm, March 01, 2011

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have to say a shame we didnt review theses aid projects

10:59 pm, March 01, 2011

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Tories, had they been in power, would have done much the same thing as Blair & co did.

Iknow that isn't a particularly noble or heroic reply - but it is true, nonetheless.

12:48 am, March 02, 2011

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Labour government done a lot of good for this country, having excellent relations with Libya so we could export arms and engineering projects creating thousand of UK jobs. Dealing with Libya is far better than borrowing billions from tyrannical china id it not?

1:26 am, March 02, 2011

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I thought we gave millions to tyranical China. See we are also giving millions to Mugabe so he can continue to pay the thugs who keep him in power.

Hard to sell our aid programme, whichever shade of government does it, when there is so much need back home.

6:37 pm, March 02, 2011

 

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