In order to provide business with visibility of potential future government supply contracts the government has published what they see as possible future contracts across the public sector.
Nothing on defence of course, national security you see, but, have a look at the category for overseas aid and development.
Click here to view the list and tell me how borrowing money to spend on Gender Based Violence Prevention in Somalia contributes to the national interest?
what a total waste of money. Not one thing on that list will promote economic growth or give any feedback to the UK.
I’m all for promoting family planning. Today the Rio 20 summit stated that the total cost to give all women access to family planning is $6 billion. Less than half of what we spend on foreign aid.
Alternative – Lets combine a durex cluster bomb with an A340 strategic bomber and drop something useful on Africa.
DfiD budget really highlights the current governments double standards. Asking UK departments that have already been cut to the bone to find a further 5% while giving foreign aid a 40% increase. Atleast when we were paying for african leaders private jets we were probably buying some influence but what does this list provide us. Lost of seminars telling muslim men not to beat there wifes. Thats really going to promote the UK in the islamic world. I hope they send clair short to give one of these seminars not body guards offcourse.
does it not seem strange that every program cost either 833 K, 1.6m, 3.3m or 6.6m.
I wonder how well these things are acounted for.
Total value of all those contracts 497 million give or take a million or 3.
This makes me quite mad TD, thankyou.
Maybe we should call back forces from the front lines and invade the DFID, after all; that’s where all the money is.
You have to bare in mind that this is the same department that spent £400,000 on a Ferris wheel in Afghanistan.
What a load of F**king waste. Absolute bloody madness. I wouldn’t mind if most of it was useful and to be fair some of the programs for providing (mosquito?) nets I can live with.
But all that shit about teaching people rights and all that crap. Surely this is stuff that a) could be done a lot cheaper, perhaps using some of her majesties finest camo wearing medics, and b) on the list of priorities for helping those governments/peoples, most of that shit comes a distinct 1001th place, behind admittedly trivial matters like water supplies and infrastructure projects.
It’s all very nobel to throw money at the DfID while everywhere else is cut, but the sooner we get our economy back on track the better placed we’d be to help other countries.
However, we shouldn’t be too quick to get all ‘DailyMail’ over wanky programme titles. The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty education programme in Ghana, for example, aims to enrol and keep school-age children in school; provide basic health insurance; provide post-natal clinics and immunization for newly-born children; and prevent child trafficking and the ‘worst forms’ of child labour. All of which seem to be exactly the kind of stuff the DfID should be spending money on.
Im all for using aid as a form of soft power but tuneless you have hard power to back it up it doesnt count for much. Of course the reason why DFiD’s budget is sacrosanct is because Cameron saw it as a way of helping to kill the “Nasty Tories” line. Sadly there does seem to be more votes in aid than in defence
I’m all for using aid as a form of soft power too, though you shouldn’t discount selflessly helping others as an end in itself, OS.
Having decided to raise the aid budget, I think, considering the present circumstances and the deep cuts elsewhere, most people would have considered it reasonable for the government to say – we will increase the aid budget, but we’ll defer the increase until we see N per cent growth in the economy for two consecutive quarters.
mm site has snags again any topic with over a certain number of posts is only displaying some of them.
On the “Leakage” post I can only see down as far as my last comment, which technically speaking means I had the last word and therefore think this is a brilliant new policy that should be adopted across all topics.
Chris B , bollocks
It is not the place of government to do charity with taxpayers money, they are more than capable of deciding when and where to give by themselves.
If they want to do charity they should make it a voluntary fund.
These countries are more than capable of solving their own problems. The fact that they don’t shouldn’t concern us. The more we jump in and pick up their governments slack attitude, the more they feel they can get away with doing nothing.
As for using aid as ‘soft power’, there is absolutely no proof that it works or has ever worked. Simply pumping money in is never going to buy you friends.
Building a capable reaction group to help deal with massive natural disasters and on the odd occasion providing expertise or advice, on the other hand, could indeed help our standing in the world.
We should be more focused on areas like Asia where political gains are more important and less on Africa where we should only be doing them favours in return for natural resources.
It would also be much cheaper than the current methods.
Chris,
My browser only takes the F35 leaks thread as far as James recounting leak-hunts with UNPROFOR, so I’m afraid you really have been outflanked by the cavalry….
APATS,
Too right.
On topic,
How about a spot of sovereign microlending? Yes there will be occasional embezzling (there’s much larger embezzlement now) and complaints from left and right about who gets lans in various countries. But if you want to introduce a bit of creative entrepreneurial chaos into developing countries and make a return on the sounder investments to help pay the way it sounds like a better idea than the current bribery-for-the-right-sorts/causes approach.
@ APATS
@ Jackstaff
Bloody red trousers.
Chris B.,
Yeah, well, queue-jumping’s just one more thing to jump (along with dressage and Sloane Rangers) for those horsey types.
Have to put this one here: some links from the comments page seem to be broken, does not go to comment, but to the beginning of the requested thread (and as was said above, some newest comments have not been indexed at all. so they do not appear at the end of the thread)
Check out spiked-online for another perspective on all this – they have a long-running theme around how interventions/aid are all about the western elite feeling better about themselves.
DfID has money! So every man and his dog can get to try out their ideas and bid for research projects and change the world. Very intoxicating. But mostly, a complete load of bollocks. Certainly, there will be some exemplary schemes in the portfolio that to immense good. These schemes should be identified and ALL money diverted ruthlesly into them and then at least, my money is doing some good and might lead to a slightly less “killy” world and thus making this country a saver place for me.
As it stands, corruption will destroy almost all the goals intended amongst these projects.
Ichabod,
It’s all pretty blatant isn’t it. This from the Guardian a couple of weeks ago:
David Cameron to chair UN committee overseeing development goals
“David Cameron has been asked by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to chair a new UN committee tasked with establishing a new set of UN millennium development goals to follow the present goals, which expire in 2015.
The invitation, accepted by the prime minister, represents a political coup for Cameron, who has stuck to the government’s commitment to increase overseas aid to 0.7% of UK GDP, despite the recession.”
Did Tony ever manage that?
Another important point to consider is what happens when these foreign countries get hooked on aid? And you know that aid can’t be sustained indefinately, so what happens when you cut it? Bad blood.
I have never seen foreign aid as a good idea of buying influence. At best, people come to treat it as expected, at worst, they get angry at you for giving, then leaving them hanging.
You could close the MOD and give it’s entire budget to DFID and, while I’m sure thirty odd billion would do wonders for women’s rights in Africa, it wouldn’t provide the UK with anything like a proportional level of influence or good will when it matters.
Can’t remember where the quote comes from exactly but I’m certain it was from a member of a government which receives large amounts of aid. “International aid is just poor people in rich countries subsidising rich people in poor countries”. The DFID contracts have much more to do with the political world view of the Whitehall left than any need the 3rd world has which trumps those of the British electorate.