The reactionary right-whinge news media are continuing to bang on about the 'injustice' of the recent raising of the foreign aid budget. And the most vociferous has been the Daily Excress* with reams of their usual blatantly racist bile about some mythical 'foreign aid fury' that could have 'saved the harrier'. "It could have equally paid for 310 new primary schools, or overturned the scrapping of child benefit for high earners." Of course the 'fury' is all theirs, the Daily Flail's and those mothballed Empire-ists at the Spectator.
Don't these people realise that this 'foreign aid' is always tied to some lucrative trade deal selling weapons (usually some redundant hand-me-downs or out-of-date technology) or privatising some utility or natural resource and UK companies get almost of of the money back? Either that or it all goes in servicing the countries' structural debt and ends up in Western coffers. Anyway, all this supposed 'wealth', the mere crumbs of which are finding their way into the aid budget,is based on a massive legacy of the concerted rape and pillage of the rest of the globe dating back to Empire, when Britain sold the ancestors of the very people who are supposed to benefit from all this aid into slavery. What comes around should definitely go around even if it is mere crumbs.
* No irony in the using of photo of a mother and baby captioned "Foreign aid will help starving families and those suffering from diseases" below the headline 'A shocking waste of billions' then?
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