I think it’s fucking hilarious to talk about “injecting” optimism. That’s what a lot of people on hard drugs think they’re doing, but the government doesn’t seem so keen…

When it comes to “injecting” self-congratulatory spunk into the pox-ridden body politic, however, it’s remarkable how much money turns up.

Will Self would have a field day.

I agree that there is much wasted money on schemes. There is also a great deal of overlap between these schemes. Much of the educational work on global education that dfid do is duplicated by the Dept of Education and more significantly, the British Council. As a teacher, I think that it is important to help our students find out about the world but this should not be confused with actuall providing funding for practical developmet.

Hmm, I take exception to drawing conclusions to…

“And disturbingly, when asked how concerned they were about the situation in Haiti, 44 per cent responded “not at all”, “not much”, or “a bit”

So, let me get this right, nearly half of the respondents ranged from being not concerned at all, to being a bit concerned. Seems to me, that covers a hell of a lot of ground and is hardly scientific. What percentage of people were actually “not concerned at all”? And indeed, why is it a negative if some people were “only” a bit concerned? We all have our own lives and problems, if some people are “a bit” concerned, that should be a positive not a negative.

Considering the so-called negative side of the poll goes all the way up to some people being “a bit” concerned, I’m guessing the only options left would have been “very concerned” and “so concerned I can’t think of anything else”, of which 56% of respondents took this view.

It’s OK to suggest attitudes may be changing to foreign aid, in light of the economic crisis (or maybe a shife in attitudes?) and to then question what should/could be done about it, but to use such a poor and unsubstantiated poll to back up the argument, doesn’t provide much in the way of evidence.

Excellent piece. Good to see a sceptical take on foreign aid budgets published here.

I’m a bit concerned to see LibCon giving a platform to these people to be honest:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Policy_Network

http://spinprofiles.org/index.php/International_Policy_Network

I know it’s a broad church here but not this broad surely?

wow. first time I’ve ever ever agreed with anything on this site. either lc is becoming more right-wing or im becoming more left-wing

During a recession people tend to look inward. The problem with dismissing these ‘feelgood’ exercises is that we don’t know how poor concern for overseas development would have been without them.

Obviously you can’t give statistics for counterfactuals but how about drawing comparisons with countries in similar financial problems but which haven’t spent money on such exercises?

I’m genuinely undecided on this: someone attempt to convince me one way or the other.

Well Julian is a old fashioned Thatcherite but what the hell were all brothers of the right now.
My god, most the posters are free marketeers conservatives (sorry liberals), why not most of the writers.
As for independence of recipients of aid. What a load of bollocks, I cannot think of one organisation that doesn’t have political bias of some sort or other.
[edited out]

wow. first time I’ve ever ever agreed with anything on this site. either lc is becoming more right-wing or im becoming more left-wing

As it was written by Thatcherite professor, you might get the answer to you condrum.

Good post Shatterface.
Probably there was success and failure

Isn’t the real scandal of overseas aid the move towards using it as investments instead of aid, as doc’d by Private Eye in recent months?

Funny how that doesn’t get mentioned.

Whilst half a million is a drop in the ocean compared to the deficit the idea that there is no waste in government is defeatist. Sorting out the deficit is a critical issue. Does anyone really believe that the cancelled projects were worthwhile ? Its not just these, there are lots of similar projects. A few weeks months ago I was listening to the radio and an ad came on for ‘Sing Up’. I checked that out and found that its got a budget of £40 million !

http://www.singup.org/about/history/

I am all in favour of kids singing and have no idea whether this is a worthwhile expenditure maybe somebody could enlighten me.

Ed Joyce

I’m not concerned about Haiti at all. Why is it disturbing?

“Almost a quarter of a million pounds of “foreign aid” was pledged to a Brazilian-style dance troupe – in Hackney, east London – in 2009.”

I guess this is supposed to be self-evidently ridiculous, but I don’t see the problem.

I’m going to have to assume that the comment at 5:22 is a joke. It’s so mind-bogglingly stupid that it has to be some form of humour. Please.

When you said “bad aid” it reminded me of this…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFNs2mOkKzc

Amusing to take advice on how to spend money from a think-tank that took the Exxon-Mobil shilling to discredit climate change science…

“Progressives are right to promote awareness of international issues, universal freedoms, and the benefits of development in poor countries. But this is different from a government funding domestic feel-good schemes”

Whats the difference between “promoting awareness” and a feel-good scheme though ? I’m not sure it’s as clear cut as you pretend. Spending public money on pointless projects and justifying it as “promoting awareness” was a hallmark of the fag end of the last govt.

@13 Assuming you are not being deliberately dense/ironic, it’s ridiculous as it helps no-one, it’s an enirely self-serving, classic hollow gesture.

The waste was not confined to International Development. Virtually every central government department and many local authorities have been guilty of spending our money on dodgy projects.

On this site I highlighted the Arts Council spending six figure sums sending Jarvis Cocker and KT Tunstall on a cruise to the Arctic to share the pain of the polar bears.

They only saw the tip of the iceberg…..

Ethiopia at the time of Band Aid 1984/5 had a population of 41 million. Harrowing pictures of starving children etc and we all gave generously. The poplulation has nearly doubled to 80 million as of 2008 (see link).

Niall Ferguson the historian has researched western aid to Africa from 1955 to 1995 and estimated it is $1 trillion, with $500 billion sitting in Swiss bank accounts and the remainder has little to show for the investment.

£250,000 would of been better spent on NICE approving cancer drugs, hip operations, or simply giving Hackney council tax payers a break.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:ETH&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+ethiopia

re dave atherton. niall ferguson. is this the same neo conservative historian and supporter of the invasion of iraq? great track record . he “estimated” saddam had wmds. like most neocons, nialls “estimates” are more like his political views rather than having any objective reality.

Niall Ferguson the historian has researched western aid to Africa from 1955 to 1995 and estimated it is $1 trillion, with $500 billion sitting in Swiss bank accounts and the remainder has little to show for the investment.

How could he possibly know , Swiss banks never give any information in their accounts.

Also Ferguson did say there was substantial evidence that there was WMD’s.

Also talking of aid, I notice nobody ever mentions that biggest recipient of western aid is Israel.
The admirable republican libertarian Ron Paul once remarked you can tell a true libertarian from a false one by asking the simple question.
“Do you support aid to Israel”

21. Loving Ron Paul’s litmus test!

Back on topic: in answer to Shatterface at 7 (and Chris Baldwin at 13), if aid is meant to be earmarked to actually help people in poor countries directly then surely it should be spent there? The UN might take a dim view of a country that claims to be heading for the 0.7% of GDP in aid target (as the coalition government is saying) while spending some of that 0.7% in the UK on PR exercises. And taxpayers may also wonder. I’m happy to pay taxes that get spent on sensible aid projects (no Thatcherite here!), but not on fluff and PR companies.

Precisely the same thing has been happening in Sweden: money spent by the government aid agency somehow ends up going to friendly NGOs for “awareness-raising”. But in my mind Oxfam, the Red Cross and the DEC do an excellent job of “awareness-raising” in the course of asking for donations (logically people will only donate if they are aware of the need).

“A newspaper opinion poll this year suggests that attitudes to international affairs may have got worse. Asked about the expanding foreign aid budget, 58 per cent thought the money should be spent “at home” instead. Only 7 per cent thought the UK should spend more on international development.”

This is incredibly disingenuous. We’ve only just come out of the worst recession for 80 years; people will naturally – wrongly perhaps, but that’s not the issue – be predisposed towards spending money domestically.

Nothing wrong with shaking up the consensus occasionally. I don’t think we can be completely dismissive of all attempts to cut costs in government. There were undoubtedly some ‘pork-barrel’ schemes. It just has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

WTF, something on LC that isn’t attacking the CONDEM (like CONDOM, do you GET IT?) government for cutting millions out of public spending at a time when doing so will cause 1930s-style recession blah blah blah we can spend our way out of recession when there’s no money left grumble grumble grumble?

*sound of blanco eating his hat*

Blanco
You really have become very bitter since the start of the coalition. Your becoming more con than dem. Shame.

I’m a bit concerned to see commentators giving a platform to these people to be honest.

Thanks for the comments, all – and apologies for the delay in response. I’ll try to answer some of the points:

political_animal / Shatterface:

I agree with your observations about the limitations of the poll. It is not supposed to suggest conclusive quantitative evidence of the awareness schemes’ failure, but rather bring attention to a lingering problem and support my *suspicion* that attitudes to aid are more affected my stories of bad aid than DAF-like schemes. But more importantly, I don’t agree that the government should be promoting its views on aid through NGOs – hence why I refer to this as political cheerleading. The argument is not so much that the schemes don’t work, but more importantly that they’re the wrong thing to do.

miligram:

As a Private Eye reader I think I’m aware of the stories you refer to, and I agree that aid as self-serving “industrial policy” is wrong. However, this is a 600 word op-ed, so I couldn’t include every single example of bad aid. Hence I don’t think it is funny that this one example isn’t included in the above.

Matt Munro:

Sorry, I should have perhaps been clearer in that part. As I hoped the article as a whole indicated, I don’t support any government expenditure of this kind. I think it’s good that awareness of international issues spreads, but this is best done privately, through independent groups, the media, and individuals’ own curiosity.

Finally, I’m sorry for those others who ignored the issues and suggested that the debate be silenced on this website, by attacking IPN. For clarification – IPN has never received any funds from any government, nor political party. I can’t speak for the whole organisation, but personally I am pro-PR, anti-monarchy, pro-migration, pro-drug legalisation, pro-abortion rights, pro-civil liberties et cetera. Hardly “right wing”. Thanks to Sunny for allowing all views to be aired.

For the records, here’s a new survey which shows similar results:

http://mediapoint.press.net/article.jsp?id=6863319