Just send £700 and you’ll help an aid boss with his bar bill Rod Liddle, Sunday Times 6th July 2014 Just when you thought the Liberal Democrats were dead and buried, they come up with a scorcher of a policy that will transport your average floating voter to a state of incalculable, orgasmic bliss. One of their MPs, Michael Moore, is to introduce a bill legally binding the country to spend 0.7% of its gross national income (GNI) on overseas aid in perpetuity. Even when we are so skint we’re overtaken by Laos and Burkina Faso, we’ll still be proudly propping up the Indian space shot. You can see the voters now, battling with a desperate fervour to get into the polling booths to register their support for this thoughtful and dynamic policy. Michael’s private member’s bill does not mention how this vast amount of money should be spent or whether voters can have a say in the allocation of the revenue, which is a shame. I’d prefer my money to be spent on private jets for tyrannical and insane African dictators, rather than digging wells for those desolate peasants you see on television, whom I find a little depressing. Sorry, but that’s just the way I am. Luckily, I get my wish fairly often as things stand, so I hope this will continue. I also want my money to be spent in countries that have a greater GNI than the UK’s — and luckily, again, that’s also a fairly frequent occurrence. The real beneficiary of Michael’s enormous generosity on our behalf, however, will not be the Indian astronauts or even the African tyrants. It will be the vast, British-based aid industry that sustains itself on such largesse, with humungous salaries, plush offices, contentious and fatuous advertising campaigns, a multitude of lobbyists swathed in self-righteousness, hugely expensive foreign trips and trebles all round. And the bosses of these organisations will shake their heads sadly when you question this expenditure as being, y’know, maybe not what the public thinks it should be paying for and tell you that it’s all sadly, terribly necessary. They need that infrastructure, they need to pay top dollar to get the best people, because that means those impecunious peasants will get the best deal possible. And they need to raise your awareness of the very real issues facing the impoverished billions of the Third World. Although they would rather not raise your awareness when it comes to their own accounts. We had an example of this last week, with a National Audit Office investigation of something called the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG). These corporate monkeys swallowed some £414m of taxpayers’ money since 2012; the figure is expected to rise to £700m in the near future. The National Audit Office castigated this hitherto mysterious institution for being just a tad lax on its old administrative costs and also for a lack of transparency. The 15 directors of the PIDG’s subsidiary, GuarantCo, spent extortionate sums on air travel and hotel expenses. A chap called Ted Rule, for example, managed to spend close to £3,000 getting himself to Stockholm for a meeting — presumably he was carried on a golden litter by Filipino dwarves. And once in Sweden, he obviously needed some light refreshments — another £700-plus down the Swanee. One Rule for the rich, huh, Ted? Four of the directors had to fly to the balmy and congenial island of Mauritius for an important meeting, again racking up thousands of pounds. Why Mauritius, you ask? Because GuarantCo, along with another PIDG subsidiary, is incorporated there. Why is it incorporated there? Because Mauritius is a corporate tax haven. I wonder if I am alone in finding that arrangement ever so slightly suspect. Or is it the case that when it comes to overseas aid, the normal rules simply don’t apply? Every objection is assuaged with the practised response that it’s all for the good of the poor old Africans. Yeah, as they say, right. It’s a racket — and good luck with your bill, Mr Moore.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 06:44:41 +0000
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