5 Deficit Busting Brainwaves: #5 Scrap International Aid

George Osborne has been put in charge of cutting the national deficit, so how hard can it be to knock a few £’s here and there off the budget? Over the next 5 days I will attempt to lop a few billion off the UK’s national deficit. I am not an economist, nor hold any qualifications to allow me to be one. But how hard can it really be?

I will be tackling 5 massive and polarising issues in this series so feedback and debate is welcomed and encouraged!

Tuesday: Scrap International Aid
Wednesday: Withdraw Troops from Conflict
Thursday: Legalise Drugs and Prostitution
Friday: Cut Tax
Saturday: Leave the EU

Brainwave #5 Scrap International Aid
Amount Saved: £5.2 billion per year

International aid is not charity; nor is it good, benevolent, helpful or saintly. International aid is instead a tangled web of power grabbing, back room deal making and money making elite. This tangled web covers the whole globe linking governments, and their leaders, together. Those who most benefit have made it an almost unthinkable proposition to scrap our participation in this activity. Instantly you become someone who doesn’t care or know of the hardships of third world poverty.

However supporters of international aid are unfortunately quite misguided in their beliefs. For international aid does not help the starving orphan in Ethiopia or the malaria infected mother in Cameroon quite as much as is being stated. Huge swathes of aid money is being diverted towards government officials, oil rich states and countries with industry that is of great interest to our own. Until quite recently the UK tax payer was flooding money into nations such as Russia and China, seeming to benefit the industrial kings and political queens of the world more than the billions of poverty stricken humans.

Many would argue that even after factoring in the “cost” of corruption and bribery, the international aid bill of £5.2 billion every year is still a worthy cause that must be protected in the face of spending cuts. No. There are better ways of helping the least fortunate in our world. It doesn’t include corruption, bribery, special interests, governments or tax.

Now I’m sure readers of this who may lean slightly to the right of politics have been nodding their heads ferociously so far but I may be about to disappoint.

Here is the catch: A more efficient, helpful and charitable way of helping those most in need from other nations is to make it easier for them to work in our own nation.

I probably just lost a good 60% of readers. 50% have clicked the back button on their browser, the other 10% are scrolling down to leave comments on how utterly mad I and my views are.

The idea is that the best way out of poverty is not a cheque every year but a solid road towards bettering oneself. By making it easier for those in struggling nations to come and work in our nation, boosting our own productivity and economy, you allow them to better themselves and once leaving, bettering their homeland with earned money in their pocket and new knowledge of democracy, human rights and business in their head.

I am conscious not to turn this into a piece about immigration, but obviously the policies surrounding migrants from these nations would have to be well thought out and planned, unlike Labour’s policies on immigration. The benefits of allowing individuals to earn in this country and take their wages back to their homeland are huge both for their families and communities and for our own economy. Certainly there are negatives of mass exodus of poverty stricken lands; policies would need to be very thoughtful of this.

There are cases where economic migration simply would not be enough to pull communities out of poverty or indeed an impossible ask. For this we have the likes of Christian Aid and thousands of other charitable organisations like them who really and genuinely do make such a positive impact on the lives of so many people. Charities in the UK I feel often don’t get enough credit for what work they really do. They are either being patronised on one side by the Government giving them hand outs, or attacked on the other by the man on the street who doesn’t want to keep seeing starving children on his TV during the ad breaks of Coronation Street.

The UK already gives a huge amount to private charity, especially in comparison with other countries like ours, but you can’t blame ordinary families in this country who are struggling financially to give away even more of their precious weekly income. I feel my brainwave #2 which will be released on Friday will help towards encouraging families, businesses and individuals to give a bit more to charities at home and abroad.

We have a direct interest in how the rest of the world is developing; blindly giving billions in aid every year feels to me like we are just brushing this huge issue under the carpet, hoping that our wealth will solve all the problems of the world. Well here is a conundrum for all you supporters of government aid: why is third world poverty still such a huge problem, prematurely killing hundreds of millions of children, mothers and fathers every year?

Total Deficit Cut So Far: £5.2billion (+increased work force)

Please feel free to leave abuse/ constructive criticism/ support, and I hope you get the opportunity to read tomorrow’s deficit busting brainwave #4!

Written for Political Pundits