Charity Starts At Home
As you may know, there have been massive cutbacks in the UK’s spending.
This has come as the country is deep in debt.
At the end of August the UK’s debt was at £1457bn.
Wouldn’t it make sense that we focused on our own country and got out of this mess before helping others? Of course it would.
Foreign aid is a sum of money that is given to developing countries. It is used to help out countries when they are hit by natural disasters or severe poverty.
Countries outside of Britain have benefited from the spending review. You could argue they’ve benefited more than Britain, which in my opinion they have.
People protest that our money doesn’t reach the needy, and the only people who benefit from the aid is the government and they become wealthier and the suffering villages receive nothing.
The foreign aid has increased by 37% going from £6.3billion to £9.4billion. The extra £3.1billion that has been allocated to other countries could have been used elsewhere in Britain’s public services.
The extra billions of pounds could have been used in other areas of spending as mentioned above. Why the extra £3.1billion couldn’t be spread out across public services instead of going to other countries puzzles me. In my opinion, charity starts at home.
Wales will be losing out on £187m in the next year as the Assembly Government will encounter a 1.2% cut in the budget of £15.7b. This will affect how we live, work and use public services in the up and coming year.
It is feared that millions of jobs will be lost; this view was expressed in early October when 3,000 people took to Westminster and protested against the spending review.
David Cameron exclaimed that, “If you can work, and refuse to work, we will not let you live off the hard work of others”
What he said is all great and I don’t think anybody would go against this, but he is implying that he is making the workshy get back to work.
George Osborne has made this difficult as it is feared that by making cuts in the public services that millions of jobs will be lost. This just contradicts what Cameron says.
Critics voice that it’s wrong that poor people in Britain could suffer to help countries that are becoming increasingly rich because of the aid that Britain are providing.
But George Osborne announced that: ‘Britons can hold their heads up high and say even in these difficult times, we will honour the promises made to some of the poorest people on our planet.’
Britain had little say in ‘these difficult times’ and I’m sure that the majority of inhabitants of our country will agree that we need that £3.1billion pound to sort our own problems out first.
Yes, there maybe some people worse off than us, but at the moment there is poverty in our own country that the government should see to first.
Are you against the 37% increase in foreign aid?
IMAGES: Edgley Cesar / Leo Reynolds
