Why is it automatically foreign aid that needs to be diverted to the flooded areas?

[VintageDresses]

The papers seem to be full of it this morning, as is FB but why is it always foreign aid that called upon?

Why not the Arts, or conservation or sport funding or the vastly bigger spending areas of health, education and defence. Why not divert all lottery funding there for a few months?

Is it even necessary? Whilst the situation must be truly awful for those affected, the financial losses will be mostly covered by insurance and or paid for by local councils (which the govt emergency fund will have to support). Those who aren't insured will be cared for in one way or another by the LA. Obviously the circumstances won't be great but a lot better than those in need of the foreign aid.

It just seems to me an excuse for generally unpleasant people to be unpleasant in a good cause and a selfish call for people to be helped in the only way they can think of that doesn't affect "us"

Yes, it is odd that foreign aid is the budget which should be cut if we need more money.

We put £12 billion extra into defence two months ago, so we could afford airstrikes in Syria. As a result, we've had to borrow £14 billion this year. The missiles we are using cost £100k each.

Not to mention the increase in the bill for private advisors in government to the Chancellor, or the Scotland Office spending £474,000 on PR when the previous budget was £108,000.

I'm not saying you shouldn't bomb the fuck out of foreign countries cos your allies asked you to, or spend a fortune on personal or jingoistic PR. But I think helping thousands of families not be flooded out at Christmas is more important than these things. Foreign aid is keeping other disaster victims survive, so we shouldn't cut that.

Yes! OP you're bang on and it's been doing my head in for days. The flooding is being used as an excuse for racism by wankers.

Maybe Giraffe, but the population of the countries that need it is not usually white, unless I've missed a major example?

Not entirely true anyway - aid shouldn't be benefiting those sections of the population who are already wealthy, although I accept that in a flawed system it sometimes does

Why is it automatically foreign aid that needs to be diverted to the flooded areas?

Probably for the same reason that is always IVF funding that needs to be cut to fund cancer treatment!

Race and foreign aid aren't related. Race and calls for it to be cut often are

Money could come from here

timfarron.co.uk/en/petition/eu-solidarity-funding

No, no-one mentions race in the calla for it to be cut

Agree it could/should be better managed but that's true of all government spending

thanks for the link docs, have signed

a generous interpretation of what the OP mentions is that people think of international development money as emergency relief, so the link to helping people here hit by natural disasters seems more obvious
But you only have to think about it for a few seconds to see that there is very little comparison
eg
disaster relief only a small fraction of international aid
DFID spending tiny compared to overall budget
existing infrastructure and insurance mitigate the effect of flooding here in ways people in developing countries can only dream of
etc etc
Again, being generous, I think the people who say these sort of things really have no conception how wealthy we are in comparison to the majority world.
And (less generous) they think those other people are somehow less deserving of a decent life.

I've seen a lot of this nonsense on FB recently.

I don't have exact figures but according to Wiki every year over 5,000 people are killed in Bangladesh and more than seven million homes are destroyed due to floods. Not to mention the increased incidence of cholera and dysentery in the aftermath. Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world and Britain (despite its economic woes) is still comparatively one of the richest.

The Western world, of which Britian is part, is a major contributor to climate change which is increasing the risk of flooding in the poorest countries. I probably don't have the facts right but it's the essence of it that I agree with. We have a responsibility to these countries and shouldn't stop overseas aid on whim because the north west flooded.

It was our government that chose to cut funding to the Environment Agency and spend billions on missiles instead. People should direct their anger at that instead of questioning the necessity for overseas aid. The British do not live in an ivory tower and it is only circumstance of birth that means we are not one of those dependent on aid from the Western world.

We put £12 billion extra into defence two months ago, so we could afford airstrikes in Syria. As a result, we've had to borrow £14 billion this year. The missiles we are using cost £100k each.

No, we didn't do that so we could afford air strikes in Syria. We did this as part of the SDSR. Defence was cut too fast and too far under the last government, as a result they are now playing catch up. There is a recruitment and retention crisis, the planes that were due to be scrapped are now having their lives lengthened. It is, also, part of the agreement of being in NATO that we have to spend 2% of GDP on defence. I was gobsmacked that the Govt honoured this.

It might have escaped your notice that there have been hundreds and hundreds of soldiers out working during this emergency. My son is one of them. He volunteered, he don't have to go. He's already done one duty, that he volunteered for, over Christmas leave. He's getting no extra pay for this. He might get some leave back. He's wearing some kit and boots that he bought himself. The defecnce budget doesn't need cutting in anyway, shape or form.

Most people see foreign aid as charity, and that is a viewpoint governments of both flavours have encouraged for decades as "buying influence" seems underhand, un democratic and empiralistic.

As such, people view it like their charity donations - and yes, if finances got tight for us, I would stop my charity donations before I cancelled the dcs music lessons or sports clubs, most people would.

It could be argued that if we'd done more in the way of foreign aid earlier, we wouldn't need to be spending anything in Syria now.

I dont feel strongly about foreign aid - I don't understand it enough, but I do wonder about the people who are always calling for that particular "non essential" spending to be cut when to my eyes there are lots of other non essential areas of spending.

At what point does that stop dinosaurs? I know people who have very little. Certainly not sports clubs etc but still give to charity. Is charitable giving the first thing to go if , say, you can't afford a second car, a holiday, new party shoes, restaurant meals? Where is the line that says "we've" got enough and can therefore afford to help others?

What has foreign aid got to do with racism Phil? People in the countries that receive aid are different races (many white)

The type of people that share this crap on FB and elsewhere hate anybody who is slightly different to them. They are often as prejudiced against a Polish migrant as a Syrian refugee .

They will of course love the French if it gives them a chance to attack Muslims.

For me it would be the point something that was a regular bill had to be cancelled - meals out and holidays aren't something that go in the regular bills category, more "what can we afford when we've paid for everything else that month" spending. If I was cancelling something, then I would cut the regular charity payments over the swimming lessons or rugby subs or music lessons. Clearly they would also have to go too if things got tight.

Foreign aid is like that, it's a regular bill for the government like sports funding and arts funding, and as it's presented as "something we spend to do good in the world" (because "we are trying to influence other countries and their governments and manipulate their policies to suit us" sounds distasteful in a post-empire Britain) - it's seen as less beneficial to the British public than access to minority sports and arts not being just for the super rich/ collectors.

phil is bang on. Seen too much of this on social media.

It's good that a lot of folk are wanting to help out the UK flood victims as it means they'll be more than happy for their own insurance premiums to rise to cover the cost of all the claims. So we won't hear any complaints about that when it happens.