Its fine to save money letting women die in child birth this year, as long as we are going to spend money preventing other women die in child birth in other years.

[Market1]

( second posting, as first one vanished...)

We have been culpable in contributing to horrendous poverty and conflict in so many areas of the globe, through political interference in the past, and climate damage now, so it is right and proper that we think long and hard about supporting pregnant women abroad in the future, and as long as we promise to continue thinking long and hard, it is fine for a few thousand to die in child birth while we think, after all, they are a long way away, and their English isn't very good.

And if they don't fancy their chances of survival in their home countries, there is always an easy road and a warm welcome waiting for them here! And a mere quarter of a million unsafe abortions? That is nothing to concern ourselves about.

YANBU - it is fine, we need to save money, and a few thousand deaths in childbirth is nothing in the grand scheme of things
YABU - we should support these women through overseas aid today, even if their English isn't very good....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66378364

Good riddance.

See you on the barricades xxx

I always wonder how much aid money/food ends up in the wrong, corrupt hands? I also think foreign aid smacks of colonialism and the idea of the white saviour. I think it's needs scrapping. Pouring money into countries with corrupt governments makes no sense and helps no one. Does anyone think sending money to Afghanistan is actually going to reach and help the people who need it right now?

It's not about saving anyone anyway - otherwise why would we send 2 billion plus to India when there are 45 poorer countries (based on GDP) in the world and there has never been any evidence that it has had any impact? It's about politics.

We're still behaving like we're one of the really big players in the world. No one is really in that great a position any more and we're not even top 20 based on GDP. Right now we can't even save ourselves.

Because school dinners is the one hot meal alot of my kids will get that day. Some of them need breakfast aswell. There are parents who are not going to go to the effort of making a healthy packed lunch. But let's not worry about those children.

Please don't assume this is even close to a good idea.

But you need to ask yourself why there are so many corrupt governments. Many exist purely because we paraded around the world dismantling existing power structures, taking everything we could before pissing off with little care for what we left behind. How rich, or not, we are now has little to do with our responsibility to repair this damage.

And you’re absolutely able to have that opinion. 6th richest yet we see a massive rise in food bank use by people who are in work. I would rather see those people given more assistance than worry about other countries. I would agree that any savings need to be spent on NHS.
Like I said, my nation is a priority for myself, I do get that others will be outraged by the cut it’s just I am not one of them.

I work in a secondary school and the fsm allowance barely covers the cheapest meal with not enough left over for a drink. A slice of pizza is too expensive!

In an ideal world we would be increasing overseas aid if we were financially able to. But with the cost of covid, cost of living, health and social care in dire straits, education cut to the bone and people on the brink of insolvency, now is not the time. We need to put our own oxygen mask on before we can help others.

I think the shameful waste of money and corruption by our governments is a travesty and if we were French we’d have been burning our cities and rioting for months. We are too bloody polite and passive.

Which situations? Women dying in childbirth predates even the British colonial era.

Well obviously. But the circumstances that lead to a lack of basic healthcare; corrupt governments, instability, conflict, climate change, etc. Look into it, and we're involved in an awful lot of it in very recent history.

Not everything in the world is the fault of the UK. This extreme left narrative is unhelpful, and in some cases dangerous. The UK has taken a stance on dangerous practices abroad, including fgm and wife burning.

Before we find maternity care abroad, we need to properly fund maternity care in the UK. Our neonatal death rate is relatively high for a developed country, in large part due to underfunding of services and staff shortages (due to underfunding). Midwives need to be paid a respectable wage, and their course funded. More work needs to be done in retention. Card in this country sadly falls short, and this leads to unnecessary suffering and death.

As for the rediculous idea of stopping FSM and giving money to parents instead, you realise that the reason we have fsm is that parents were often sending no, or nutritionally terrible lunch, to school with their children?

FSM is to ensure that children get one healthy meal a day at the minimum. Ask anyone who has worked in a school about the things they see in packed lunches: children coming in with nothing and going hungry unless school staff spend their money on them, cold KFC etc.

This is pure ahistorical nonsense. When the British “discovered” other civilisations most of us had our own thousands of years of empires and so on in addition to our advanced sciences, arts and culture. The British did not invent corruption, nor was it new to us. There was corruption before, during and after the British. What is racist is pointing at foreign governments and going on about how corrupt they are when our British government is off the scale corrupt itself!

I will support any party that pledges to cut foreign aid to zero. Our country is a mess. Our social care is a mess. We have people here living in extreme poverty.

A line needs to be drawn

You do understand that there are some children whose parents do not spend their money on food for them?

Which is why free school meals should be protected. It guarantees every school attending child at least one decent meal in a school day.

YABU. We can’t and shouldn’t be trying to pay for other countries when we have problems here.

Anything we give elsewhere is a waste anyway as it’s a drop in the ocean that doesn’t fix their massive problems.

we have people in poverty, but extreme poverty is very rare, everybody has food, everybody has access to flushing toilets....

It is the difference between life and death to individual women, I don't suppose you would call it a !drop in the ocean" if it saved your life in child birth, or saved your baby

I cant decide if you are naive or not quite all there. Go and walk our cities streets or visit our housing offices up and down the country. Temporary accommodation if full to bursting. Rough sleeper teams are run off their feet. They dont ALL have access to food or clean water

What policies do you support to fix the problems you mention in social care and with extreme poverty?

There are many things I disagreed with the coalition government about, but one thing I did agree with them on was the overseas aid commitment. Which should have been retained and be something with cross-party agreement.

I know Mr Johnson cares not about women unless he can have a relationship with them. You would have thought though he'd care about safe abortion given one of the women he has had a relationship with has acknowledged having one.

And I would have hoped Mr Sunak would end the cruel decision to reduce the overseas aid budget.

Oh don’t be silly. We can’t and shouldn’t try to help everyone. It is what it is.

Our money should be for our country. It’s that simple.

what is silly?

Thousands of women will die because of this decision.

Real human woman, not just abstract numbers on some political balance sheet

Are you OK with that? reallY??

Oliotya
But you need to ask yourself whythere are so many corrupt governments. Many exist purely becauseweparaded around the world dismantling existing power structures, taking everything we could before pissing off with little care for what we left behind. How rich, or not, we are now has little to do with our responsibility to repair this damage.

No, I don't accept this. The British had an empire as did most other developed European countries, and other non-European countries at various times. As governors the Brits did good things as well as bad (they stopped suttee in India for a start). I'm not defending imperialism - just pointing out that nearly every country has done it AND had slaves and often ruled more cruelly. The Belgian empire was appallingly cruel.

But the para above is a perfect example of why I stopped reading the Guardian. Whatever was wrong in the world, I soon learned to skip to the final para of any Guardian article and sure enough, I'd be told that the Brits (and especially middle-class Brits) were actually to blame. In fact, pretty much everything that goes wrong in former colonies is Britain's fault, apparently. I was even told by someone that Britain was to blame for the Rwandan genocides!

Not only is this attitude wrong but it's incredibly patronising - suggesting, as it does, that (for eg) African countries are helpless and have no agency since they became independent. Some of them have been independent for 80+ years. Time to stop blaming the old colonial power, I would have thought.

And it's quite right that no more financial aid should go to India. It has a space programme, for God's sake!

Have you read much about the origins of the Rwandan genocide? Or colonialism in general?

I ask because the British education system firmly refuses to teach much of anything about these things until university level, so many people don't know about it, unless they go out of their way to educate themselves.

so many eyerolls on this🙄

We just are so superior, hardworking and clever that we decided to sort ourselves out, while those idiot countries are just too stupid/ lazy etc to stop dying all over the place. Nothing at all to do with the historical context of how those countries came about and the role that imperialism played in it.

And then the little racism reversal twist at the end.

10/10 for bigoted post. [slow clap]

Here we go again! The Indian space programme! The best, most efficient, most economical in the world - we need planetary defence! We need to be monitoring and predicting near earth objects, and we need to be able to respond to them if they threaten us! The world needs the Indian space programme - we all benefit from it in added security.

This is where the dinosaurs went wrong- they didn't allow India to develop a space programme!