If the country is in that bad a state, then why dont we send less aid to other countrys?

[nomorebooze]

Am i not getting it? I dont think we should'nt help but FFS why cause all this money stress for our own when the goverment throws OUR money at other countries. Including wars etc which i dont feel is always for our countries safety or benefit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would not tar all NGOs with the same brush but I would agree that large NGOs often spend money on unnecessary things. I prefer to donate to small charities, but I also personally visit my charities every couple of years and check their financial records. I appreciate this is not possible for everyone.

I can promise you this: Those of you who think there is poverty in Britain, or that people go hungry here, you can have no idea of what grinding poverty there is in India.

I have just come back from visiting a charity in Mumbai supported partly by British Asians. It helps build creches for the children of construction workers. Saw tiny, crying six month old babies left alone and hungry in the middle of dangerous building sites by their mothers, daily wage labourers who had no other option. I won't argue with the opinion that the Indian government should be helping them. But in the meantime, I can't possibly agree with the view that there are plenty of British children who are worse off.

caste system IS stupid bsolutely Ski

thing is, if people really beleive that those people are less than them (trust me I hate that as much as anyone) then they won't be arsed how they suffer

which is where aid might come in I guess. Wheere there is a faith system that can encourage it (and can be a mighty reformer depending on inclination of individual of course....) then what?

As for NGO's{ they are like the charity sector: tehre are some I woudl gladly support and some I would not touch with a bargepole, doesn't take long in the sector to know which is which IME.

cherrymama - how can you say I am wrong and how can I believe that? This is my BEST FRIEND from when I was 18 years old. What is "wrong" about that?

Ok I get that but you said you agreed with capricorn and as she's admitted, her take on NGOs WAS unfair.

A local Uni prof I know runs a charity building schools in India; they don't waste a penny, i;ve never been but she takes aprty of students each year as part of a wider cultural trip, and they fundraise before they go.

A little charity making enrtomous differences.

But whilst many little charities are good, some are really rather ieefective and some of the big ones very worthy: I worked for macmillan (amongst others), clearly in a differents ector, and whilst tehy don't always gets it right they make hiuge differences and I woudl always choose to support them.

You have to take them as you find them, I think.

because whilst we may want our country to give aid for altruistic reasons, that is far from the prime motivation for the decision makers

as capricorn said "Most aid isn't real aid, it come with strings which actually boost our economy at the expense of the the country who receives the 'aid'. For example we will say to an African country that we will give them £20m, however, £10 million must be used to build roads etc that will be built by a British company so the money flows right back. "

when you start looking at how bad a deal our 'aid' (and that of other western countries) is for most of these countries, it is quite staggering.

I'm not anti-ngo / charitable aid however, but I do feel that there needs to be close and frequently scrutiny of whether it actually reaches the people that need it.

I agree with those who say aid needs more scrutiny (for the sake of the donors and the recipients) but I am firmly in favour of continuing to give aid.

OP, bear in mind some money labelled as aid is spent for our benefit really:
-to stop wars and conflict that would cause thousands of people to flee as refugees and seek asylum including in the UK;
-to stop drug smuggling and other crimes that are planned and partly carried out abroad but which have a big and deleterious effect on the UK;
-to increase British influence and to promote British interests generally.

And halting aid will do nothing to change income differentials in this country. Even if all aid were stopped, in all likelihood the money saved would not be put into the welfare system (not under this government, anyway).

Because we can afford it. Although the ins and outs of it are not always clear, it is in all our interests to help poorer and unstable countries to become less poor and more stable.

I agree with Thistledew on the whole. Why help? Because we can. Foreign aid is IMO part of the price we pay for being lucky enough to live in a civilised and relatively affulent country. Yes we have a big deficit and yes we have families living below the poverty line and it's very hard and very sad, and of course they should be helped too, but it doesn't make the recipients of foreign aid any less deserving.

D

It's too easy to say that we shouldn't provide aid because it gets creamed off by dictators, or gets wasted in other ways.

That's like saying that we shouldn't pay disability benefit because there are scroungers who take it when they are really healthy.

Clearly not all international aid goes to where it should do - but - most of it does and it's a literal lifesaver for millions of people.

I have family who are very senior in the UN and have lived and worked in Africa for 40 years. Having seen what they have done and the projects that they have run, I would never, ever want to stop the aid we currently give to that part of the world.

I'm not so committed to India because there is enough money in the economy - they just don't extracate it properly!

By saying we should look after our own first, we're putting anything that's not specifically saving the life of people, children, babies, above the lives of those who happened to have been born in a different country. We should perhaps stop the arts budget, the IVF budget, cosmetic surgery on the NHS before we stop trying to save the lives of babies who happen to be black.

And no, I'm not saying we SHOULD stop any of those. It's just that to stop aid first would make them more important than someone else's child, and I am not comfortable with that.