British Politics Thread.

[Psychosplodge]

How about No? Look what your lot did last time...

[Wildeybeast]

Seconded.

On the international aid thing, getting rid of it in favour of 'our own tribe first' is rather short sighted. Whilst we obviously shouldn't be funding a country with a space programme (and I believe no longer are), most international aid is worth while.
Some of it is emergency disaster relief, which I challenge any decent human being to claim is unnecessary. Plus if a big rock from space smashed into our country and buggered us, we'd expect the rest of the world to chip in and save us.
The other type of international spending is international development which is focused on attempting to help stop crappy countries being so crap so that the people there can develop into productive trade partners and members of the global community, rather than Ebola ridden death zones that we then Have to chuck cash at to save or terrorist breeding grounds that we have to blow up, costing us far more in the military budget.

How exactly money is spent abroad needs looking very carefully at, but simply withdrawing it full stop is a false economy as it benefits us in the long term.

[Denzark]

What I would do for international aid is have a department, be it DFID, or whoever. The only government money that would go into it would be the minimum necessary to pay the civil servants who run it.

The whole purpose of this department would be to coordinate the passage of monies to places that need it. The monies themselves would come from donations from the populace.

So, at the end of the month, you think you have a spare fiver, you can donate however much. You think you can afford a ton and want to, you put that much in. You think you don't want to send a single penny overseas, good for you.

Because this money is people's post tax income, it does not affect state spending. There is none of the moral issue of Cameron with Samcam's monies and his £150k wage, telling tax payers on a shedload less that 0.7% of all tax receipts should go to parts foreign with dodgy human rights abuses and no innate support for or love for the UK.

I think it immoral to pay aid to other whilst a single aspect of Britain is not operating at 100% efficiency. You think otherwise, you have the option to donate to save the children or buy a book from Oxfam, and let the state fix NHS/obesity/dementia/infrastructure etc etc.

[Wildeybeast]

What I would do for international aid is have a department, be it DFID, or whoever. The only government money that would go into it would be the minimum necessary to pay the civil servants who run it.

The whole purpose of this department would be to coordinate the passage of monies to places that need it. The monies themselves would come from donations from the populace.

So, at the end of the month, you think you have a spare fiver, you can donate however much. You think you can afford a ton and want to, you put that much in. You think you don't want to send a single penny overseas, good for you.

Because this money is people's post tax income, it does not affect state spending. There is none of the moral issue of Cameron with Samcam's monies and his £150k wage, telling tax payers on a shedload less that 0.7% of all tax receipts should go to parts foreign with dodgy human rights abuses and no innate support for or love for the UK.

I think it immoral to pay aid to other whilst a single aspect of Britain is not operating at 100% efficiency. You think otherwise, you have the option to donate to save the children or buy a book from Oxfam, and let the state fix NHS/obesity/dementia/infrastructure etc etc.

You aren't going to get any state run system operating at anything like 100% efficiency and to think otherwise is laughably naive. The only possible way you could get the NHS anything like where we need is a significant increase in taxes. I also don't know how it can be moral to focus spending in obese layabouts who have gorged themselves to diabetes and a gastric band whilst people abroad starve because God decided not make it rain this year; or to waste money on drunken morons who have smashed each other's faces in and poisoned their own livers whilst women and children flee their homes in terror because crazy people decided to have a war; or how about paying for those idiots that have riddled their own lungs with cancer whilst people in Africa die of AIDS simply because there was no one to teach how the **** the bloody thing spreads, never mind access to contraception. If you honestly think it's immoral to spend money on those who are incapable of helping themselves abroad rather than spending on the parasites and wasters at home who knowingly and willingly de story themselves and expect the rest of us to pay for it, then there is no point us discussing this any further as we won't find any common ground.

[Denzark]

If you honestly think it's immoral to spend money on those who are incapable of helping themselves abroad rather than spending on the parasites and wasters at home who knowingly and willingly de story themselves and expect the rest of us to pay for it, then there is no point us discussing this any further as we won't find any common ground.

I personally wouldn't spend it on either to be frank. As I said in a post above smokers and drinkers should pay any costs associated with that. Likewise fatties and gastric bands, I totally agree.


But there are things need fixing here and here should be the priority. If you can find more than 20% (if that) of nations we give aid to, that don't have an army, a war with their neighbours and a hugely corrupt government and a president with a full swiss bank account, I would be surprised.

I would countenance putting them all under Empire again as they were probably better off - but which ever way you cut it, it is not the business of government to give charity for nothing to external countries.

There is real genuine poverty here, there is dementia, cancer, a million and one things that that money could go to that are NOT self inflicted by feckless wasters and I would rather look after our own first.

[Mr Mystery]

There's an opinion piece on the Telegraph website today, calling for a Middle Class uprising, based on the dodgy Phones4U scandal ongoing.

Worth hunting down and reading.

[AirHorse]

Interesting read...I hadn't actually paid much attention to the phones4u scandal till I read that!

Shocking that companies can get away with such things...

[Wildeybeast]

I personally wouldn't spend it on either to be frank. As I said in a post above smokers and drinkers should pay any costs associated with that. Likewise fatties and gastric bands, I totally agree.


But there are things need fixing here and here should be the priority. If you can find more than 20% (if that) of nations we give aid to, that don't have an army, a war with their neighbours and a hugely corrupt government and a president with a full swiss bank account, I would be surprised.

I would countenance putting them all under Empire again as they were probably better off - but which ever way you cut it, it is not the business of government to give charity for nothing to external countries.

There is real genuine poverty here, there is dementia, cancer, a million and one things that that money could go to that are NOT self inflicted by feckless wasters and I would rather look after our own first.

I agree that we need to look very carefully at exactly how and where we are spending money abroad, but there are plenty of methods of spending it so it goes directly to the people that need it and no where near Mugabe and chums. I'm just objecting to the idea that we scrap it international aid outright. Quite apart from the moral objections that British people deserve it more simply by luck of having been born here, it is a well established historical precedent that isolationist polices damage countries in the long term, not to mention the benefits we gain from international aid.

I quite agree more should be done to tackle poverty and illness at home, but there are plenty of less deserving, not to mention less effective, wastes of money at home. Let's start with all the money that gets pissed up the wall by the NHS on incompetent and unnecessary middle management and compensation forked out every year due to blunders bought about by poor training and procedures. That should free up plenty for dementia research.

[Denzark]

I quite agree more should be done to tackle poverty and illness at home, but there are plenty of less deserving, not to mention less effective, wastes of money at home. Let's start with all the money that gets pissed up the wall by the NHS on incompetent and unnecessary middle management and compensation forked out every year due to blunders bought about by poor training and procedures. That should free up plenty for dementia research.

We do have SOME common ground then Wildey..

[Deadlift]

How about No? Look what your lot did last time...

Exactly.