Now, should we richer countries, or us richer people, be paying foreign aid to make poorer people better off? Sure, I think that’s something I can sign up to. Actually, I do and no, I do not urge you to do as I do. But just to make you aware, this, or this (same people) could be worth a bit of whatever you might take to be your charitable impulse £5 here or there, splash out, £10. One of the little weirdnesses of life is that I think I was one of the original donors to that, like before it was even really set up. I write a column for a Bangladeshi newspaper and they pay me. Which goes into that charity and that’s that. Pfft, it’s £100 a month and why the hell not? A gutbuster of boiled eggs, rice and veggies costs about 20p to produce and deliver so that’s, hmm, mebbe 500 meals? Best paid job I’ve got, certainly. There is absolutely nothing else I do in this life that feeds 500 hungry kids.
OK, so, preen, preen, aren’t I wondrous. But the point is, in fact, important. Yes, sure, it’s a trivial amount. 45 minutes a week of my time. But I do buy into, at some level, that we have and they don’t so let’s roll.
That does not mean that I have to buy into the official development assistance idea, ODA. And, indeed, I don’t. One reason there is that I know the numbers for feeding kids who get fed at school. Many have noted that poor kids can’t go to school because if they do their family hasn’t enough cash to feed them. So, the kids’ve got to go work in the brick factory to make the pennies to feed them. Parents don’t want to do this but most things in this life are better than dead kids. And, well, howsabout we all chip in to provide a lunch - mebbe breakfast actually - at school so that the kids can turn up, learn, not have to be at the brick factory and also eat? Bit of a plan, eh?
The US runs a scheme like this. Having seen the numbers it’s $200 per year per child fed. Not bad, eh? Except, Mary’s Meals (look, they’re Scots. Determinedly - themselves that is - Catholic but despite those two problems, clearly good people) do it for about $20 a child. A year.
So, as the Mary’s Meals folks would insist, I must apologise for my saying fuck the government and promise not to do it again. Fuck, on the basis that we humans do more of what is cheap and less of what is expensive. So, school lunches at one tenth the price is good.
Oh, and fuck the government.
Because the government actually goes out and says that it’s the amount of money lifted from our wallets that matters. No, really, they do. There’s an official target of 0.7% of GDP - so, a little under 1% of what every person in the UK does each year - has to be sent to those poor folk. And there’s a problem there. That official target doesn’t include what any of us do as charity. Nope, not a penny of it - and last time I saw those figures they were of that sort of size if not above.
This is official, see? The amount the government collects in tax from us then spends on official projects overseas. With an alarmingly large lift from it in the payment of all those officials who make it happen.
Now, I agree, we can’t all run it on the basis that I do (Mr Editor, the fee for my column, please pay it to this laddie here, who feeds poor kids) but it really isn’t necessary for us to have people on £100k and up (and, yes, I do know someone who had one of those jobs, and his pay) in London doing this stuff.
OK, that’s just setting the scene. This:
UK overseas aid spend will reach 17-year low without urgent action, NGOs warn
Humanitarian sector says UK will lack credibility at world summits owing to ‘devastating’ impact of budget cuts
That “credibility” is that Tarquin and Jocasta won’t be able to offer more official aid to the sorts of J Foreigner officials who steal it to buy expensive watches.
Fuck’em. And, yes, I really do mean that. Feeding the poor, sure. Feeding T&J’s egos as a way of doing that. Nope, right off, right right, and that damn horse you rode in on.