What is so special about the Palestinians?

Is it because they are the only people 'oppressed' by Jews?

The one hundred and thirty-third weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week's award goes to The Taxpayers Alliand for their discovery as reported in The Express that:

'THE Palestinian Authority is using UK aid to buy school books which incite anti-Semitism and martyrdom, according to the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

The pressure group also says UK cash, which amounted to £62.5million in 2009, is helping to indoctrinate children in Gaza and the West Bank by funding official media that celebrates terrorism and preaches hatred.

Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is vital the next generation of Palestinians aren’t brought up to choose violent confrontation over peaceful compromise.”'

 Western 'aid' being used to fund hated of Jews in Israel, and outside - "No shit, Sherlock"

The Express article concludes thus:

'A Government spokesman said: “This is based on an old, erroneous report. The textbooks have also been approved in East Jerusalem Palestinian schools which fall under the control of the Israeli Ministry of Education.

“Our programme helps the three-quarters of Gazans relying on food aid simply to stay alive where 90 per cent of mains water is unfit.”'

Somehow I don't believe this denial. The FCO is full of Arabists and hates Israel almost as much as the French and Arabs do.

Saturday evening catchup

1) What is fairness? -

'I am now getting slightly weary about the debate about whether the changes (which let’s not forget need to be made) or fair or not.

Is it fair that next door there is the exact same house as what I reside in yet because they have 3 kids they get much more bang for their council tax buck? Is it fair that they have had child benefit for years when we have currently chosen not to have kids even though they clearly don’t need the money?

Is it fair that my wife and I both chose to get off our back sides and in an effort to get good jobs decide to commute around 250 miles a day? Is it fair that by doing this the £8,000 cost each will rise 3% plus RPI?'

Indeed?


2) 'Should we be sending £1.2 billion to the European Commission?' -

'Approximately 490,000 jobs are estimated to be lost due to the effects of the Coalition Government’s spending review. About seven thousand of these are likely to come from the army. Whatever you think about these proposals for reductions in public spending (I’m broadly in favour), it is a fact that we have been told that these cuts are occurring because there is no other option. There’s no-where else to find them. They’re not ideological (I wish they were); they’re unavoidable.

…So why is the budget for international aid going up by 37%? To clarify, this means that next year the Department for International Development will spend eight billion pounds. Yes, eight billion. In 2012, this will be twelve billion. This is partly due to Cameron’s pre-election promises not to reduce international aid, and partly due to the government thinking such measures would be unacceptable to the compassionate, broadly liberal public. Where, then, does the money go? Well, department running costs will be slashed by a third and aid to Russia and China will be reduced to zero. European_flag_outside_the_Commission However, last year, around £94m went to the ‘Democratic’ Republic of the Congo. £297m went to India, a country with citizens in appalling poverty, the fourth-largest economy in the world, and a space programme. £56m went to Zimbabwe. We gave Russia about £200k (which is being cut). £1.2 billion went to the European Commission. We have been giving millions of pounds to countries that have the most deplorable human rights records in the world, countries where it is doubtful that the citizens will ever see it.'

Well quite...


3) Andrew Gilligan says that 'Labour: London borough becomes 'Islamic republic' - Something that I blogged about earlier today.

'On Tower Hamlets council, we’re told, the IFE calls on allies who support its aims. It’s also accused of using its influence to help its friends rise to power. These friends include the Labour leader of the council – Lutfur Rahman.

Dispatches has been told that the IFE helped him win the support of Labour councillors.

...

Life at the Town Hall started to reflect religious practices and demands.

TED JEORY: Proceedings changed, they were adjourning more for prayer breaks, occasionally meetings cancelled during prayers, even during Ramadan as well.

And two years ago, councillors attending meetings which did go ahead during Ramadan were met with a new request, in an email from a council officer.

CLLR PETER GOLDS (Conservative), Tower Hamlets council: It suggested that all councillors should refrain from eating.

ANDREW GILLIGAN: So councillors felt they were being ordered not to eat during Ramadan.

CLLR PETER GOLDS: Yeah, and there was certainly an implication of that.

ANDREW GILLIGAN: What was your reaction to that?

CLLR PETER GOLDS: I wasn’t the councillor that raised it, but I was concerned because I do think we are, this is a multicultural borough and certainly the Muslim population is large and important but it is not the dominant culture in the borough.'

Hmmm...

Aid to the Palestinians, what is it spent on?

Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

Another two sensible policies from this Conservative/LibDem government

1. International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said aid recipients must demonstrate value for money. The UN, World Bank and other international bodies that receive money from the UK must therefore prove they deliver results or face cuts.

2. Mark Hoban, Financial Secretary to the Treasury has said that despite Herman Van Rompuy's recommendation that national budget plans are shared at EU level before they are presented to national parliaments, the British will not accept it. "The budget will be presented to Parliament first... there is no question of anyone other than MPs seeing it first".


Add this to sensible policy announcements on ID Cards, HIPS, bin collection and speed cameras and I feel a more cheerful NotaSheep.

The money of poor people in rich countries going to rich people in poor countries

I believe that is how someone once described aid to third world countries so I was unsurprised to read that:

"Sudan has refused to hand back half a million pounds worth of British taxpayer-funded equipment seized from aid agencies six months ago.

British diplomats in Khartoum have demanded that the vehicles, computers, office equipment, medical stores and cash be returned so that it can be redistributed.

But Sudanese officials have scoffed at this, saying that neither the British government nor the aid agencies have "the right to control these assets"."

The west has thrown more and more money at largely unattractive African governments for 30+ years and I wonder what percentage of the money has made it to the poor of those unfortunate countries and what percentage to the bank accounts of their rulers?

Aid to Africa

Here is a contrary point of view to the norm. Do read the whole article but here are a few extracts:

" Despite a deluge of aid between the years of 1970 and 1998, poverty on the continent skyrocketed from 11 percent of the population to 66 percent, which means over six hundred million Africans are now impoverished.....Dambisa Moyo is a unique voice in the debate over African aid. In a conversation dominated by white, male westerners—and most conspicuously by celebrities such as Bono or Bob Geldoff—Moyo is a black, African woman....Moyo earned her master’s from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Economics at Oxford. She’s worked as a consultant to the World Bank, and for the past eight years was the sub-Saharan economic expert for Goldman Sachs. It was at Goldman Sachs that Moyo began work on her book, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is A Better Way for Africa, just a few weeks ago.....

Systematic western aid, Moyo argues in Dead Aid, has essentially turned Africa into one giant welfare state. The unending stream of money has created a situation where governments aren’t accountable to their citizens: since they don’t depend on tax revenue, leaders don’t think they owe their people anything—and the people don’t expect anything from their leaders. Moreover, says Moyo, since the money flows virtually no matter what, tyrants like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (three hundred million dollars in foreign aid was sent to Mugabe in 2006 alone, says Moyo) often pilfer it and buy foreign goods, or stow it in foreign bank accounts where it does nothing to help the country. Furthermore, aid stamps out entrepreneurship. Moyo offers the example of an African mosquito net maker. When aid arrives in the form of a hundred thousand mosquito nets, the net-maker is out of business, and one hundred and sixty people (employees and dependents) are now aid-dependent. This, she says, is not a sustainable model. "

"It’s somewhat bizarre that all this evidence is out there [that aid doesn’t work], but somehow we just continue to push for more. Let’s take the capitalistic system for a second. It’s quote, unquote, not working now. We have centuries of evidence that it generates wealth and delivers jobs, and yet here we are after one bad year and we’re ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So I find it quite worrying that we can look at aid—after sixty years and one trillion dollars that haven’t worked in Africa—and we still don’t question the system...."

"There is an incentive structure for the donors, and African countries know this. They know that the World Bank can only survive if it’s spending money. So when the conditionalities are not met, the aid continues to flow anyway....The World Bank discouraged Ghana from going to the capital markets to raise money because it wanted to keep the aid flowing. We’ve seen situations where, in order to keep the system going, the World Bank has lent to countries just so they could pay off old debts. A friend of mine had a great quote: “Africa is to the development industry what Mars is to NASA.” NASA spends billions on a MARS project, but they don’t really think we’re going there. Same with aid. Billions are spent, but no one really thinks it’s going to develop Africa. It’s kind of a scam."

Money down the drain

Once again the UK have promised more money to an African country. According to theBBC "The UK has agreed to give Uganda £700million in aid, the International Development Secretary has announced. The money will be used to fight poverty in the country over the next 10 years, Douglas Alexander said."

A while back I read a report of how much money has been given in aid to Africa over the past 40+years. I will find this report and link to it here, it will amaze you.