Sham Cam

Other countries do the natural thing in times of crisis and cut their foreign aid budgets e.g. the US and Sweden. I think MPs are there to represent the public and I don't think disabled people and elderly and sick people should have their budgets cut in order to pay aid to foreign countries who have space and nuclear weapon programmes. If they felt like it they could allocate any savings on foreign aid to disabled children. I don't believe their convenient arguments that cancer drugs only prolong life for a few months. Doctors often get duiagnoses wrong and say people only have a few months left to live and they then live for years. They want to save money, so they will justify it by these sort of arguments. Other countries like Germany do give their cancer sufferers these drugs but we are told that there is no point because the sufferers will only live for a few months.

How much foreign aid did they send to the Iraqi children with horrific birth deformities due to being bombed with depleted uranium?

Reasons why we shouldn't cut our foreign aid budget:

Many of the places we send aid to are in the mess they're in because of us, either stemming from colonialism or recent conflicts. You break it, you pay imo.

The money goes much further there than it does here, it makes a huge difference and is a drop in the ocean compared to our total budget (less than 1% I think).

The lives of people in these countries aren't even close to the lifestyles of the poorest and most disadvantages people in our society. In Congo, for example, they estimate that over 30000 women were raped last year. Some of the females included in that figure are as young as two years old, that's a fucking crisis, not some welfare cuts.

(oh and for the record, we don't fund all life prolonging cancer treatments because they rarely offer value for money, they maybe offer an extra month or two or a 30% chance of working which is of course the most valuable thing in the world when it's your family member but makes no economic sense - this is capitalism!)

You're falling for Tory tactics, divide and conquer, you're effectively campaigning for them to make MORE cuts by resenting the areas they have ringfenced. Do you honestly think cuts in foreign aid would go d
straight back into respite care for disabled children?

We are a small country with a huge deficit. We've probably got a larger deficit and more debt than India, I don't know. Ireland is bust. It may spread and we are also at risk. Have the Irish cut their foreign aid budget? We can't feed the world. Our prority in times of hardship is to look after our own poor and disabled and sick. We have our own people dying becuase they aren't given cancer drugs and it is their taxes that are paying for the foreign aid. The US and Sweden have cut their foreign aid budgets because times are tough. We should do the same and we can increase it again when we recover.

The point I was making was that although Indias economy is bigger than ours there are far more people living there which you've got to take into account if you're looking at prosperity.

Its like arguing that this country is more prosperous than Luxembourg or Switzerland because we have a bigger economy but that is only because we have a larger population. You have to look at GDP per capita not just nominal GDP.

Why oh why would you if you have all the advantage of being David Cameron would you go into the thankless task of politics if you didn't care about others, surely you'd pick a less stressful career ?

Even though countries such as India and China have seen impressive growth rates they are still a long way behind us in terms of economic development and there are many people who are considered to live in absolute poverty so yes I think that we should keep sending them aid.

'Indias economy is 50% bigger than ours but they have a population of approximately 1 billion whilst we have a population of 60million.'

So should we cut benefits for our own poor, sick and disabled in order to help the billions of people across the world?

popelle - they are making £20bn of cuts in the NHS - one-fifth of the whole budget. 'Protecting' NHS budgets is spin. The claim is once £20bn has been cut, it will be somehow 'reinvested'. Not much saving for the public purse if a hospital sacks 20 nurses and then has to hire 20 more back again the following year, actually. And no guarantee the ward that has been closed can or will be reopened.

Btw, as I explained in a previous posts, cutting services for disabled people doesn't actually save money. It just makes one budget line for one part of one organisation look better. The costs will show up elsewhere unless that disabled person magically gets better. They still need that care - if they don't get it, they may have to go into very expensive residential care, they may be admitted into hospital as an emergency (which is extremely expensive), or their families may break down under the strain, which again in economic terms is jolly expensive.

Of course, if the bean counters are really savaged, the disabled person might die. That's about the only outcome that would 'save' money. Bit inhumane, though, don't you think?

'I think we should send money to emerging economies as even though they are showing very impressive rates of economic growth there are still a lot of people in those countries who live in horrific poverty.'

If you had disabled people in your family and funding was cut for them and you were struggling financially, would you accept your taxes going to help countries who have nuclear weapon programmes and whose companies buy some of our car producers and football clubs and as McShane said, who have more millionaires than us and an economy 50% bigger than ours?

Indias economy is 50% bigger than ours but they have a population of approximately 1 billion whilst we have a population of 60million.

I take it back. Credit to a socialist. The ex-Labour MP, Dennis McShane, has actually raised the foreign aid issue

'India?s economy is about 50% bigger than Britain?s, the country has more millionaires than the UK, so why should British taxpayers continue to help? This was the question posed by a former government minister ? Dennis Macshane, yesterday'

People are actually asking questions on BBC World

worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/why-is-britain-giving-aid-to-india/

It probably doesn't get much air time here, just on BBC World.

edam- the problem is the deficit is so large the axe has to fall nearly everywhere. The coalition is ringfencing NHS spending which is a fairly large chunk of public spending so to make the cuts needed to eradicate the deficit then nearly everything else is going to have to be cut.

I think we should send money to emerging economies as even though they are showing very impressive rates of economic growth there are still a lot of people in those countries who live in horrific poverty.

The point about aid helping to build relationships with emerging economies is an interesting one. Although aid should not be sent purely to help build partnerships I do think that it is helpful in relations with these countries and we should seek to capitalise on that.

popelle - why should the sick, the poor, women and children take the lion's share of the pain? That's a political choice. You don't have to make them suffer. The government decides where the axe falls - it could protect services for the disabled, it is choosing not to.

The reason that diasbled and other services are being cut is because of the dire fiscal situation we're in. I think Tony Blair said that the poorest and most vulnerable suffer if you let the public finances get out of control.

Are you saying it's OK for social services or the NHS to stop providing overnight care for a profoundly disabled stroke survivor because worse things happen in India, or Afghanistan?

I agree that suggestions that it's either or are false - it's not development vs. social care, we should cut things that don't hurt vulnerable people. But your post smacks horribly of 'poor people in this country don't know how lucky they are'.

There's an interesting argument about whether we should be sending aid to emerging economies such as India and China, I think. If these countries are growing wealthier and becoming competitors, should we be helping them out? Or would it be inhumane to cut support for the needy just because some people in the same country are getting rich? Or are we using aid to further our own political purposes, i.e. to build a relationship with the emerging economies?

I agree locotitis, I always find it strange that people start questioning the foreign aid budget and say it should be cut in order to help the poor in this country even though the lives of the poor in this country are far superior to the poor in the developing world.

Very true, twoshoes, should have included that in the list.

Are people really suggesting that we should go against our committments to the developing world?

good post edam, can I just add that a lot of families will have no choice but to put their children/family members into residential care, which will cost thousands

(Oh, and I agree with the OP, David Cameron is being a hypocrite parading his sensitivity in public while making savage cuts in the services that he KNOWS full well are so vital for disabled children.)

Cutting provision for people with disabilities is not only inhumane, it is also short-sighted and costly. It's just that the costs show up somewhere else - so it looks as if you are saving money.

When NHS trusts sack nurses, people don't stop being ill. When social services are withdrawn, people don't stop needing support with personal care.

You end up with families and carers unable to cope with the overwhelming pressure, with people breaking down, with families or disabled people having to give up work, with increased mental and physical health problems, you end up with disabled people getting sicker because they aren't getting the services they need, so they reach a crisis and have to be admitted to hospital (many times more expensive than social care - one visit to A&E alone is £350 without including the knock on costs of admission or treatment).

It's stupid. The costs still exist - in fact they actually increase. But because it doesn't show up in the original budget of the LA or PCT employing six SALTs, that's fine. Bugger for the disabled person and the taxpayer, though.

The environmental scare stories are a lie. More and more people now realise this. That's why they had their recent Channel 4 documentary and debate on "what the green movement got wrong", where they admitted that polls show that the majority don't believe the bigwigs and earnest talking heads.

In times of need, you batten down the hatches, you try to ride the storm and you look after your own suffering people first, until you again have the money to spend on other causes. That's what other countries do.