Exporting Taxpayers Money - British Families Financing Poverty Abroad

One would think that the first priority of any government would be looking after the interests and well being of its citizens, after all that's what they promise every four years or so when trawling for votes at election time.

As the British people slowly emerge from their media induced, two decade long slumber, they are finding reality is somewhat different. What they were promised in exchange for their vote compared to what has been delivered is an indication of the contempt that they held in by their elected representatives.

The previous Labour government followed their socialist instincts by taxing the people until the pips squeaked while spending the country into bankruptcy at the same time. The incoming Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, led by David Cameron, promised to mend the broken economy using a combination of spending cuts and increased taxation.

In other words, a severe dose of austerity for everyone except the ruling class and the so called poor in undeveloped world. Cameron not only promised to 'ring fence' spending on international aid but to increase it in real terms.

All the British people have to show for their sacrifice, and their votes, is an economy that is still broken accompanied by an unprecedented drop in living standards.

One would have thought that the package of austerity measures would have fixed the broken economy as promised, but the government are still borrowing some one hundred billion pounds per year and the national debt has passed a staggering one trillion pounds.

The outgoing Chief Secretary of the Treasury, an odious individual by the name of Liam Byrne, infamously left a note for his successor making light of the fact that his Labour government had emptied the Treasury.

"Dear Chief Secretary, I'm afraid there's no money. Kind regards - and good luck! Liam".

The flippant message conveyed the fact that the petty, small minded Byrne was not only reveling in the discomfort of the incoming Chief  Secretary, it also inferred that emptying the Treasury, borrowing to the limit and racking up record levels of debt was a deliberate scorched earth policy designed to make it difficult for the incoming government. This would make it unpopular and hence limited to one term.

(Byrne story here)

Typical of the ideologically driven, modern day political class who believe that the ends justify the means, it was a cynical political calculation taken regardless of the disastrous consequences for the British people.

Judging by their profligate behavior, the wellbeing of the British people has never been a high priority for the current political class - instead they continue use taxpayers money either to satisfy the requirements of their ideological agenda or to parade their 'progressive' credentials on the global stage.

Government spin doctors and media managers are attempting to convince the hard pressed British people that due to the continued lack of money, which apparently is nothing to do with them, austerity will be required for many years to come.

It hasn't gone unnoticed that despite the lack of money for the British people and the continuing requirement for high taxes and austerity, the government is awash with money when it comes to its own vanity projects and burnishing their own 'progressive' credentials.

Rubbing salt into the wounds of the impoverished British people, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman, thinks that exporting money abroad is a good thing, even labelling economic migrants who send their welfare benefits to their home country as heroes.

It doesn't enter her head that if migrants can send their welfare benefits home, they are either falsely claiming benefits while working, which is a criminal offence, or they are being paid in excess of what is required to live on.

Her economic ignorance and her contempt for the British people knows no bounds. While some twenty thousand pensioners in fuel poverty will die of hypothermia this year, Harman is calling on the government to make it easier for immigrants to export money abroad and to add insult to injury she wants to give them tax refunds, yes tax refunds, to encourage more immigrants to do the same.

(Pensioner poverty story here)

Harman derided "those who say that we should look after our own first" in the recession and vowed to fight any attempt to cut the overseas aid budget.
At twenty three billion pounds, remittances are more than double the foreign aid budget.

(Harriet Harman story here)

Despite abundant evidence that foreign aid is a total waste of money, and in many cases an impediment to development, it was increased by a staggering twenty eight percent last year, going from just over eight billion pounds to just over ten billion. While they impose austerity on their own people at home the political class plan to keep increasing this monumental waste of money until their 0.7% of GDP target for foreign aid is reached.

(Foreign Aid scandals here and here)

In addition to this scandalous waste of money, over fifty five million pounds per day is handed over to the unelected bureaucrats of the corrupt European Union who's accounts have failed to pass an audit for the past nineteen years.

Child benefit welfare payments worth ten million pounds is sent abroad each year for children of  economic migrants who don't live in Great Britain.

Unemployment benefit is being claimed by thousands of economic migrants who have returned to their home countries, with three million pounds being claimed by the Czech Republic alone.

The amount of money exported from Great Britain is beyond my skills to calculate but apart from the money already mentioned, there are payments or credit lines to the IMF,  the World Bank, the United Nations and its agencies, ad hoc payments to the EU to cover overspending together with other emergency aid requirements.

It is a sad fact that despite the tens of trillions spent on alleviating poverty since decolonisation, most of the developing world is no better off with deprivation, pestilence and civil war as rife as ever. In spite of this, the government will continue to ignore the calls from its own citizens to take care of poverty at home first. Obviously their posturing on the world stage appears to be their top priority.

In conclusion, many people rightly ask how it is that there is never any money for the poor at home because austerity is needed to fix the broken economy but there is always money available to bail out the destitute countries of the Eurozone and to wage war in the middle east.

There is a certain irony in the way that governments spend a fortune bombing countries back to the stone age then go on to spend another fortune in development aid to build them back up again.  

Mammoth EU-Africa Summit - Failed Superstate's Desperate Attempt To Stop China

The one thing that politicians and bureaucrats love most of all is a summit meeting; topics are irrelevant so long as the world's media are present and the taxpayers are picking up the bill.  If ever a politician or a bureaucrat goes missing the chances are they'll be found in some expensive location attending a summit.

The sheer number of summits for our representatives to attend is mind boggling.  There's the UN, NATO, G20, G8, Commonwealth Heads of Government, WTO from Doha to Cancun,  EU Foreign Ministers, The Earth summit, Climate Change summits, Bilderberg conferences, to name but a few.

Apart from dining on the best cuisine our money can buy, what goes on at these summits is a mystery. All the taxpaying public get for their money is a photo opportunity, where publicity conscious politicians elbow each other to stand next to President Obama or Angela Merkel, and a joint communique which says nothing of consequence.

Life carries on after a summit meeting much as it did before, the only difference appears to be a few extra pounds added to the weight of each attendee and a few extra pounds subtracted from the purses and wallets of the hard pressed taxpayers.

One also has to bear in mind that prior to these summits, lesser politicians and bureaucrats from participant countries have met up multiple times, at great cost to the taxpayer, in order to set up the whole jamboree in the first place.

One of the biggest summit meetings in history is taking place at the moment in Brussels, where some seventy politicians and bureaucrats will attend the mammoth European Union-Africa summit. This has supposedly been convened to improve political and economic ties between the EU and Africa with an emphasis on development aid, climate change and migration.

In reality this particular summit is a desperate attempt by the EU bureaucrats to stop dynamic countries with growing economies such as China, India and Brazil from replacing the collapsing economies of the stagnant, out of date EU with respect to development in Africa.

Incidentally, an agenda like this should send shivers down the spine of every taxpayer in Great Britain and Germany as this is the sort of trendy, ego massaging nonsense that the politicians love to wallow in, especially when it involves publicly promising to give away more taxpayers money. (The rest of the EU countries are too bankrupt to make a meaningful contribution)

The summit itself didn't get off to a very good start when Zimbabwe's long time tyrant, Robert Mugabe, suggested a boycott which didn't materialize - he failed to attend anyway because his notorious shopaholic wife Grace was refused a visa.

South Africa's erratic corruptocrat, Jacob Zuma, also refused to attend using the excuse that he was too busy. It would appear that looting the Treasury and stealing money destined for development aid in order to renovate his personal mansion, is obviously a time consuming business.

Also in non attendance was Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir on account that he is wanted for war crimes and would be liable to arrest the moment he steps off the plane.

Among those who are attending the summit are Kenya's Uhuru Kenyatta, who us currently under indictment at the International Criminal Court.

Also in attendance are Nigerian corruptocrat Goodluck Jonathan, the long term Ugandan despot and gay hater, Yoweri  Museveni and a boat load of other unsavoury characters who routinely loot, pillage, starve and generally oppress the unfortunate people of Africa.

More attendees here.

Why UN Secretary General, Ban Ki moon is attending is a mystery for the simple reason that his organization is crippled by inefficiency, incompetence, anti semitism and corruption.

The sole function of the UN at this point in its history is to provide a platform for every anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Capitalist totalitarian nut case on the planet.

The reason that African leaders love the UN so much cannot be based on its performance with respect to their continent. It has spectacularly failed to stop  wars, including civil wars, genocide, famine, mutilations, torture, rape, murder, kidnapping for child soldiers, together with the widespread looting of aid money and natural resources.

Apart from indulging in another taxpayer funded junket and taking the opportunity to polish their 'progressive' compassionate credentials on the world stage, the stark fact is that despite the outpouring of positive propaganda, the European Union is a complete and utter failure.

The Soviet Union type command and control of all aspects of political, economic and personal life by a bloated unaccountable bureaucracy is out of date. The EU today is stuffed to the gunwales with time expired politicians and career bureaucrats who's only function is to churn out ever increasing amounts of regulations that strangle economic growth and job creation.

Due to the inbuilt inefficiencies and corruption of self serving bureaucracies, they require ever increasing amounts of money just to service themselves. There is no extra benefit to the taxpayer for the ever increasing contributions, only more regulations requiring more bureaucrats.

Using free enterprise principles, the dynamic economies of China, India and Brazil are catching up and overtaking the moribund EU and slowly replacing it as a dominant force on the geopolitical stage. Africa is in the process of disengaging from its former colonial masters and realigning itself with the up and coming power houses of Asia and Brazil.

In a 2012 paper, the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) was forced to admit that the relationship between Africa and the EU is changing, noting that Africa is on the rise while the EU is on the wane.

This paper highlights the outdated attitudes of the EU towards Africa and the changing attitude of Africans to development, they are now focusing on trade and investment instead of monetary aid.

Informed people have been warning for decades that pouring endless sums of aid money into Africa will not cure the problems that have blighted the continent since the end of the colonial era.

Trillions have been pumped into Africa in the decades since de-colonization and the situation of the people has got increasingly worse.

Award winning Zambian economist, Dambisa Moyo will know more about the damage aid does to the African people than any European Union bureaucrat, publicity seeking Hollywood actor or ageing celebrity rock star.

She explains it all in her book Dead Aid.

Dambisa Moyo also accurately predicted America's descent into socialism.

Unscrupulous vested interests that benefit from the aid industry have always framed the debate on development aid including the use of harrowing images of starving children to ensure that emotion and hand wringing replaces common sense and logic.

The multi-millionaire aid industry professionals, along with publicity seeking celebrities and agenda driven politicians, are responsible for prolonging misery, disease and death across the African continent, either to appease their white mans guilt or to further their own selfish ends.

It's worth quoting from this report as it not only highlights the changing attitudes of African nations  to development through investment and trade as opposed to monetary aid, but it also exposes the real reason for this mammoth summit.

With reference to the EU and Africa:

"The marked reversal of roles between the two continents is a good starting point. Many African countries are experiencing unprecedented economic growth, with a booming natural resources sector and growing markets. Europe meanwhile, is struggling with financial crisis, soaring debt, budget cuts and widespread euro-skepticism".

The wind of change is blowing across Africa but the mindset of the out of date Brussels bureaucrats is too fixed in their anachronistic ideology to understand and adjust accordingly.

"This trend is reinforced by new development partners, such as India, China and Brazil, promoting new kinds of relationships that prioritise trade, investment and geopolitics over official development assistance (ODA)."

This quote confirms what the realists have been saying for years only for them to be derided and smeared with accusations of cruelty, racism and lack of compassion.

"Many African countries' attitudes towards development assistance have changed as well. Rather than relying on ODA, African countries are actively developing other policies and methods to insure economic growth.  Domestic resource mobilization, innovative ways to secure national and regional financing and utilization of the resource boom for wider development are examples of new ideas that call for rethinking the role of aid."

EU politicians and bureaucrats are unable to rethink the role of aid because they have committed themselves to giving away 0.7% of GDP whether recipient countries need it or not.

"The game has thus truly changed.
...West African countries led by Nigeria refused to open their economies to free trade with the European Union.
One report says negotiations over the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) stalled two years ago after countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) resisted lifting tariff barriers over fears they could crush nascent industries unable to cope with European imports."

The Eurocrats still maintain that using collective bargaining clout to secure global trade deals is an advantage of EU membership. Obviously not in the case of ECOWAS. Great Britain could have secured an independent trade deal had it not been shackled to the EU dead horse.

"The EU should learn from this episode.  The bloc, on the other hand, should disabuse itself of delusions of grandeur, because it's greatness is well and truly gone and the wealth accumulated by theft and plunder is fast diminishing.   (Ouch! That's a home truth).

"Europe can only be poorer; less powerful.  The other point concerns the shifting power and economic dynamics with the rise of new players fronted by China."

The truth is there for all to see but the Eurocrats dedication to the United States of Europe project will always take priority over reality and the well being of the peoples of Europe.

"Statistics indicate that China's trade with Africa jumped from US$10 billion in 2000 to an estimated US$200 billion in 2013 and in the process overtook the United States as Africa's largest trading partner."

The rest of this eye opening article is here.

It should be accepted that it's all over for European Union and no amount of summit meetings with their promises of ever bigger sums of taxpayer money will alter the fact. The colonial age and its aftermath is over and done with.  Africa is moving on and realigning itself with dynamic countries and their growing economies; the EU bureaucracy had better get used to it.

As the western countries concentrate on imposing their Marxist inspired 'progressive' agendas on their reluctant populations, Africa and the developing world are moving on and it won't be too long before their global positions are reversed.

If events carry on as they are, anyone with an imagination will have some idea of how history will progress from this point.

Resource rich African states using free enterprise principles, and guided by China, India and Brazil, will realize their potential and prosper; they will continue to develop and eventually overtake the current developed world.

The so called developed world, including the USA, will continue its descent into self imposed mediocrity where inequality has been erased and everyone will be equally poor and miserable.

While African states and the developing world starts to move ahead, western politicians will continue fiddling their expenses and obsessing about gender neutrality, sexuality, gay rights, women's rights, minority rights, animal's rights, abortion, diversity, community cohesion, cultural sensitivity, multi-culturalism, combating climate change and redistribution of what little wealth there is left.

In conclusion, it must be admitted that the EU is time expired, inefficient, corrupt and totally moribund. A self serving, unelected, bloated bureaucracy stuffed with inexperienced career bureaucrats and retired politicians dedicated to outdated ideologies cannot compete in the new dynamic world.

It is in the peoples interests to bring this monster down and enjoy the blessings that are inherent in freedom and liberty.

Former 'Great' Britain Now A Third World Country - India Is The Future

The descent of Great Britain from one of the greatest superpowers in history into a third world shambles has been as spectacular as the rise of India in the opposite direction. If this seems like an exaggeration then a cursory look at the facts should put the minds of any doubters at rest.

I've had the privilege of visiting and working in India several times during my expatriate career so I have witnessed this remarkable transformation first hand. I have also witnessed first hand the willful destruction of my own country at the hands of a self serving political class who usurped political power in order to implement a global 'progressive' agenda on behalf of an anonymous elite.

In 1979 myself and three others purchased an Indrail pass for fifty US dollars each, this gave us unlimited travel on the extensive Indian railway system for a month or so. It allowed us an opportunity to experience a lot of India first hand; cities, towns and villages were all on the itinerary with the objective of seeing as much as possible and meeting as many people as time allowed.

I won't go into it here only to say that the culture shock was huge and the poverty worse than I had ever imagined. My second visit was a two month assignment to Bombay in 1986.  Signs of change were already evident and there appeared to be a certain unexplainable confidence developing which I had missed on my previous visit.

My third visit was a week long assignment in New Delhi which only allowed a cursory mingling with the locals and a trip around the tourist trails of Old and New Delhi.

My final visit was a four year assignment starting in 2002;  based in New Delhi I took care of all the company businesses across India and Bangladesh. This assignment came as big a shock as my first one in 1979; poverty was still extensive but much reduced, it appeared to be on the fringes of the modern towns and industrial areas which were as prosperous as anywhere in the developed world.

The pace of change was stunning; even in my four years there were new highways and subway systems built in New Delhi;  the modern satellite city of Gurgaon was expanding at great pace and included golf courses, country clubs and ultra modern shopping malls.

The biggest change was in the people; they were mainly young, educated, talented and highly motivated, they were also ambitious and had a confidence born of optimism for the future. Indian institutions were still rife with corruption particularly in political life and this was holding the country back; I formed the impression that when the people take control and clean this up, India will take its place in history as a superpower.

Reading about the launch of India's first home built aircraft carrier and its extensive military capabilities, including intercontinental nuclear capability, came as no surprise but adding to that their space program and their economic advances, it inevitably leads to comparisons with their former colonial masters.

'Great' Britain has gone in the opposite direction of India with a downtrodden population robbed of their heritage and with little confidence in the future. The people are crippled with a fear of political correctness, their towns and cities are being transformed into multi-cultural crime ridden ghettos and their standard of living is dropping faster than their house prices.

'Great' Britain and it's unique culture is being deliberately dismantled and the country downgraded in the cause of equality of nations and cultural relativity.

Apart from being a nuclear power, India has a functioning space programme, something 'Great' Britain gave up on during the socialist disaster of the Harold Wilson years.

India's economy is booming while 'Great' Britain's economy is continually in the doldrums; it is hamstrung by over regulation, taxation and political interference by agenda driven politicians. While India is looking at growth rates of between 5 and 8%, the British Chancellor is trying to spin a growth rate of 1.5% as a monumental success.

'Britannia Rules The Waves' no more; known as the senior service of the British military, the Royal Navy is a laughing stock with almost as many Admirals and Rear Admirals as they have ships. What kind of genius spends billions on a new aircraft carrier that doesn't have any aircraft?

'Great' Britain's once feared military has been hung, drawn and quartered by successive governments in search of ever more money to spend on social programs for their various voting bases.

The military strength of India is now greater than that of 'Great' Britain, whose capabilities are now only slightly better than bankrupt Italy.

Despite overtaking 'Great' Britain,  joining the developed world and having more billionaires, in an act of unexplainable delusion, the British government continues to give development aid to India. 

The explanation that the long suffering taxpayers have been given by their ever so trendy, 'progressive' Prime Minister is that David Cameron "firmly believes that the British people shouldn't become prosperous on the backs of the world's poor".

The Department of International Development has been forced, very reluctantly, to reconsider taxpayer handouts to India after their Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, told them that India doesn't need then and doesn't want them. The fact that India has a development aid programme of its own didn't seem to register with the spendaholics at Westminster.

The descent of 'Great' Britain into third world status can be laid at the door of the self serving  political class and the brain dead idiots who continue to put them into power.

In direct contradiction to the British people, the Indian people are allowed by their government to be family orientated, patriotic, proud of their heritage, proud of their culture, proud to be Indian and they are not ashamed of who they are.

The Indian people are busy getting educated and working hard in order to join the burgeoning middle class. They are not obsessing about gay marriage, sexuality, multi-culturalism, diversity, equality and fairness, political correctness or any of the other 'progressive' nonsense that is being forced down the throats of the British people.

If the British people want to reverse the decline and have a prosperous future like our Indian brothers and sisters, then they must throw out the political charlatans that are responsible for their destruction and they must do it at the earliest possible opportunity otherwise it will be too late.

Bankrupt Government Suspends Aid To An African Despot

With the news that the bankrupt British government is suspending handouts of hard earned taxpayer money to Rwandan despot Paul Kigame, readers will be forgiven for thinking that the government was finally listening to the people they claim to represent.

Justine Greening, the new Secretary of State for International Development has announced that she is withholding a 21 million pound installment out of a 300 million pound budget, 200 million of which has already been spent, which is due to be handed over to Rwanda in December.

Apparently Justine Greening has only just become aware of what the rest of the world has known for years,  that Rwandan President Paul Kigame is a blood soaked despot who, in addition to killing any opposition in his own country, is involved in a bloody insurrection in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Justine Greening is a qualified accountant who is so highly regarded in the business world that she has enjoyed senior positions with such international giants as GlaxoSmithKline and PriceWaterhouseCooper.

It is surprising then that she appears to be unaware that Great Britain is bankrupt to the point that the country has to borrow over 121 billion pounds per year and has accumulated a national debt of some 1.5 trillion pounds which in turn attracts an annual interest payment of some 45 billion pounds.

Under the present dire economic circumstances in Great Britain one would think that this Rwandan windfall could be put to better use by either decreasing the borrowing requirement which would help to keep the colossal nation debt in check, or by paying off some of the national debt itself with the subsequent decrease in the crippling debt interest bill.

If not then it could be used toward a cut in VAT from the current ruinous 20% to help stimulate economic growth, or to cut duty on fuel and energy which is the life blood of the economy.

The money could be better used at home where people are struggling to cope with the effects of the ineffective government induced austerity programme.

This is austerity programme is causing hardship for millions of people including the elderly,  many of whom have been forced into fuel poverty by the governments deliberate inflation of energy bills which are used to pay for the 'combating climate change' scam.

Justine Greening could give the money back to those to whom it rightly belongs, i.e the taxpayer, but in keeping with current thinking the government can spend the peoples money better than the people can themselves.

As usual the wishes and the suffering of the British people will be ignored and none of this money will be spent at home. The International Development aid budget is a percentage of Gross Domestic Product therefore the money must be spent elsewhere in the so called developing world.

The aid budget is currently some 7 billion pounds per year, Prime Minister David Cameron has indicated his determination to double this figure by incorporating into law the UN mandated figure of 0.7% of GDP dedicated to foreign aid by the end of this parliament.

This is against the express wishes of the British people but this counts for nothing to Cameron as he attempts to  boost his image in the eyes of the UN and the international political elite. David Cameron is lining himself up to cash in on the multi billion pound aid industry with its millionaire consultants when the British people finally kick him out of office at the next election.

The British people can only guess which country is going to get an increase in baksheesh now that Kigame is out of favour. The Democratic Republic of Congo must be candidate despite being one of the most resource rich countries on the planet. Poverty in this country is avoidable and is the result of Western sanctioned corruption by government officials and their cronies.

Justine Greening could increase the bloated billion pound aid budget to oil rich Nigeria, the poster child for African corruption. Taxpayers money is being spent in a country which collects billions in oil generated revenue and where vast areas of the country are under Sharia law. The British government is financing a country where thousands of Christians are being massacred and their homes and churches burned.

Similarly she could increase aid to Pakistan and Bangladesh, two violent kleptocratic dictatorships that suppress any opposition at home and who, like Nigeria,  have a penchant for murdering Christians and burning their homes and churches.

Then there is oil rich Libya or Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt,then there's the long term basket case Somalia, resource rich Uganda and Tanzania, Mugabe controlled Zimbabwe, Assad controlled Syria, diamond and mineral rich South Africa and many more undeserving countries who could all be benefiting from an increase of British taxpayer money.

Apart from Somalia,  these countries all have functioning governments of their own who are capable of prioritising where they allocate their own resources however limited these resources may be.

These governments have conciously chosen corruption and the personal well being of its officials over the well being of their people.

The governments of the developed world can better help the people of the developing world by not financing corrupt dictators and their cronies who spirit away the money that was meant for development aid.

They could also listen to the global economists and expatriates who have been calling for an increase in trade by removing protectionist barriers that are an impediment to economic advancement.

International Aid is an industry in its own right which would collapse if the developing world should ever truly develop.

Justine Greening should ignore David Cameron's post Prime Ministerial ambitions and listen to the experts.

Trade not Aid.