FIRST OF ALL CAMERON disparages his country’s history on a visit to Pakistan. He then announces a gift of £650 million in foreign aid from hard pressed British taxpayers to support Pakistani schools. How much of this money will find its way to its intended purpose in this notoriously corrupt country, remains to be seen. But this is neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is, is that it should not have been given in the first place – especially when 20% of cuts in our own education budget are about to take place. Am I not right in thinking that all repairs to schools in this country are being put on hold; while students are being asked to contribute £9,000 toward their higher education?
Such brazen contempt for the taxpayer is equalled only by the politicians own arrogance, seen fully on display when it comes to the way they distribute that part of the public’s hard earned incomes demanded from them by Her Majesty’s Internal Revenue Service. To demand cuts in public spending while at the same time protecting the billions distributed amongst other countries only adds un-necessarily to the misery the British tax payer will be put through in order to reduce our deficit.
We know that public expenditure has to be brought under control. But nevertheless we do have some measure of control over the way in which we chose to do it. The billions we need to cut from the national budget can be prioritised in such a way that the tax payer’s exposure to the cuts are minimal.
This will not be done by, first of all ring-fencing the oversees development budget, followed by a British prime minister vilifying his country in a foreign land to the applause of the very people he is addressing; and about give £650 million to.
When the Coalition took office last May, I found it bizarre that a Conservative Party should put oversees aid before their country’s defence. The oversees aid budget is between £7-8 billion annually. Instead of forcing cuts upon this dissipation of public taxes, the Coalition allowed those billions to freely continue on their journey to places like India and China whose economies we are told, are bristling with wealth. Indeed, both countries are due dubious honour of replacing America and Europe over the next forty or so years, as the new economic superpowers.
What on earth can be the justification for distributing, like confetti, British tax payers money to these two economic leviathans in the making?
At least a half or even three-quarters of the development aid budget could have been taken back. I would however have preferred that the whole of this budget be rescinded for at least five years. By doing so, our defence budget could have been saved much of the cuts this Coalition are about to make. But defence is my hobby horse; others would prefer education or the NHS to be saved from the wretched 20% axe.
BUT THE TEMPORAY REMOVAL of the oversees aid budget is not the only means of reducing our deficit that would allow our defence budget to remain free of all cuts.
Today Portugal sought a €80 billion bailout from Europe. Although we were not signatories to the European single currency, we are still, it appears faced with making a contribution until 2013 to any failure of the currency in any part of Europe. In Portugal’s case this exposure could amount to a potential £5 billion; but a more conservative estimate is £3 billion is considered more likely. However, when you are talking in billions in an area where trillions are owed, then you are in real trouble.
Whatever our eventual contribution to altering Portugal’s economic fate; coupled with the oversees aid budget, we would have been able to ease even further our own budget cuts. Conservatively speaking, some £10 billion could have been saved by rescinding the oversees aid budget and by refusing the £3 billion to help bail out Portugal.
When it comes to priorities, the politicians always become a law unto themselves. They control the money gathered through taxation and will ignore all public opinion utside of metropolitan London.
I believe that the vast amount of people in this country would have sooner seen our defences ring fenced rather than the oversees aid fund. They would have also preferred that the £3billion assigned to Portugal’s survival would have also been better spent in relieving the assault upon this nations deficit.
As far as Portugal is concerned, our politicians are at each other’s throats, each blaming the other for agreeing to be signatories to a relief fund that was set up to help Greece and which will run until mid-2013, and requires us to cough-up whenever any European country meets Portugal’s fate between now and 2013.
Apparently this country agreed to such an arrangement after the last election, but before the Coalition emerged to form a government. This meant that the previous chancellor, agreed to this procedure that is now expected to cost this country dear. But such is the need for politicians to protect their credulity, the then chancellor, one Alistair Darling, disputes the present chancellor George Osborne account of how this arrangement was made, thus, they hope, either putting the blame on the other, or equally distributing the responsibility for the rather expensive and politically embarrassing manoeuvre.
AS FAR AS EUROPE IS CONCERNED as well as the fate of the Euro; there is only one guilty party responsible for what has happened, and, as always, it results in disaster. The guilty party is idealism. After the last war Europe set about emerging the continent into a kind of United States of Europe. Such an arrangement was supposed to put an end to the wars that had plagued the continent for centuries. By combining nations into a kind of federal super state, the European Union could emerge on the world stage as a force equal to the USA.
Almost all of the main party’s leaders in this country were and still are enraptured by such a prospect. In this country Ted Heath started the ball rolling in the 1970s for ever greater union within Europe. Our post war leaders who had participated in the Second World War and witnessed the destruction, were also sympathetic to such an offer of European Union. The trouble was, however, that they were blinded by their idealism.
We were right to stay outside of the single currency, but it appears that by doing so it has still cost us dearly because of the Europeanization of all the political parties since Ted Heath first proposed our membership.
Our nation today needs to count its costs. It cannot spare any monies to any other country, despite what the politicians dictate to the treasury. We must look to ourselves for deliverance from our national debt. No other external source of funding should be allowed to continue while cuts are being made domestically.
This, I believe, is the only form of recovery that the public will tolerate. If we continue to pour billions that we are told we do not have, into oversees aid and European protection, then the people will sooner or later come to their senses and demand that this largess be stopped. How our politicians can pretend that their spending decisions in any way reflect those wishes of the taxpayer is beyond me. Such arrogance from those who govern us has not been witnessed since the reign of the Sun King.
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