Sham Cam

[newwave]

Touching to see Mr and Mrs Cam crying at the school their late Son Ivan went to and all the nice words about the care he received. Pity is that he dosent give a toss for other children in the same or similiar positions, if he did he would not be cutting so much child provision.

Still not suprised, being a Tory or voting Tory says you are a selfish person.

'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?

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?

'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?

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.

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 ?

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.

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.

mama, for power maybe, are all politicians "in it" for the benifit of others then.

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?

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?

I think the child benefit cut has been talked about so much because it was so politically significant. It was before the CSR and it was an early indicator of what was to come as well as it being seen as the tories making cuts which hurt their support.

cikals - so when the tories shit on their own it's a big deal, but when they shit on the vulnerable people everyone knew they would shit on it's less of a big deal because they don't matter/weren't tories anyway? Nice.

Not saying that you necessarily agree with that analysis mind, but it's still a pretty unpleasant slant all the same. I don't give a rat's arse about how "politically significant" it is that people who earn more than twice the national average salary will get child benefit cut. Yes, it's the first universal benefit to go. But frankly, the poor and disabled are being shat on twice as hard and it's a national disgrace that people don't give a damn.

claig to be fair, they didn't HAVE to make any cuts to services for disabled children, they chose to. There is ideology at play here, not just £££.

I was 100% behind the child benefit cut, it was outrageous that it was constantly defended. Boo hoo, poor middle class people losing a little bit of money.

Comparing here with Germany is comparing apples and oranges, they pay for healthcare, if cancer patients pay/have insurance then of course they get the best treatments! However, the NHS can't fund treatments that don't have proven return on investment.

Ring fencing foreign aid isn't an easy choice for any politicians, typically politicians only really care about domestic policy because that is what wins them both. They're ring fencing foreign aid because it's our duty and obligation to these countries. What the US and Sweden are doing is totally irrelevant.

'Ring fencing foreign aid isn't an easy choice for any politicians, typically politicians only really care about domestic policy because that is what wins them both. They're ring fencing foreign aid because it's our duty and obligation to these countries.'

I think the opposite. I don't think they care about the domestic. There are still people in Hull who are not back in their homes after the floods several years ago. The cuts to our disabled people don't show concern for domestic. We know that some aid is used for political purposes and we sometimes earn back in consultancy etc. a lot of what we spend in aid. I think it is interesting that all parties are in agreement about not cutting foreign aid, except for parties like UKIP, who believe in trade not aid. I think it is relevant what other countries such as the US and Sweden do, because it shows that the signing of these international commitments is not paramount and can be overridden in emergencies such as the financial crisis that we are now in. Money does exist and can be found to support the disabled if they wanted to. Where did they find the money to help bail out Ireland?

Of course they care more about domestic, that is what gets them votes, however narrowing it down even further they care more about populist domestic policy.

The Conservatives absolutely don't care about disabled people, if they did, they would find the money but don't make it about them ring-fencing foreign aid. All you (and by you I mean the press and general public, not just you) is just giving them the green light to make MORE cuts. That money won't go on making anything else better.

Agree that there will be no complaints from the Guardianistas about an increase in foreign aid, because their pririties are not with our disabled people.

The TUC apparently get money from the foreign aid budget

www.policynetwork.net/accountability/media/tuc-gets-millions-government-foreign-aid-pot

and even a Guardian journalist says

"There is increasing recognition that whether they like it or not, humanitarians are part of a political game: "The point is to manage their role in it such that they can uphold the interests of the victims." In fact, many aid agencies, such as Médecins Sans Frontières now accept that "humanitarian assistance is not a de-politicised act of charity".

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/17/north-korea-aid

The left won't complain because ordinary people here are not a priority for them. They have bigger fish to fry internationally.
It is the right-wing UKIP that is against it.

We know that they all pretend to care about the domestic when election time rolls around, in order to drum up votes. But after the election has been won, manifesto promises are often shredded and it is business as usual until the next election comes round.

I don't think it's a case of one or the other, I think foreign aid should be ringfenced, just as I think that money for respite, DLA etc should be ringfenced.

Nobody is giving us a choice between them, I would rather see at least one of them ring fenced instead of both of them cut.

But we are told that they haven't got the money, so they have to make cuts. But it is significant that the cuts "have to fall" on our disabled people, but an increase can be made for foreign aid, and it is significant that the Guardianistas don't ask any questions about that.

Ring fencing any area of public expenditure shows inflexibility. Nothing should be sacrosanct at this point. Everything should be looked at on it's merits.

Foreign aid is an aspect of our foreign policy strategy, the same as defence or diplomatic or trade initiatives. If we are willing to cut defence to the bone we should be at least willing to look at cutting foreign aid.

I agree, Siasl, especially when Aid goes to places like Ethiopia, where population has doubled since Feed the World, yet they're still starving to death. I actually think it's child abuse to bring a child into the world that you can't feed or clothe adequately. Iknow a lot of it is ignorance, but fgs, put the money into family planning!