These past few days, I've been waiting patiently for the Secretary of State for International Development to get back to me about the interview I was promised pre-election. In the meantime, I've been brainstorming some ideas for the interview.
One thing that I know I want to ask about is the ring-fencing of the aid budget. Of the many Tory (Conservative party) policies, the promise of safe guarding two departments - the NHS (National Health Service) and the aid and international development budget. The first is not so controversial, but the second, has caused quite a stir.
Anyway, a day is a long time in politics, and 6 weeks, even longer. No real surprise then that when the true extent of the deficit left by the outgoing Labour government was recently revealed, some of the initial promises were going to have to be broken. As soon as that was made clear, people assumed that the first to go would be the aid budget, which was rumoured to be cut by a whopping £600m.
Today's budget however reveals that they have in fact kept that promise, and will not be cutting the aid budget at all.
It got me thinking - the Tories obviously had international aid down as a vote winner, to commit to safeguarding it in such tough economic times. Now that the true extent of the damage has been revealed, I wonder, are we, the people, less committed to helping the developing world?
Image courtesy of cartoonstock.com
Last night I got an insight - albeit a small one - into how the general public feel about dishing out billions of tax payers money to needy causes - to put it midly - they're not all that hot on the idea.
As a prelude to today's emergency budget, Channel 4 hosted a live version of its investigative programme Dispatches, entitled 'How to Save £100 Billion'. I was lucky enough to be in the audience and be given a keypad to vote on where I think the Chancellor George Osborne should 'wield the axe'. The studio audience were asked to vote on all sorts, from VAT to proposed road taxation and so on. What caught my eye however was the mention of the Robin Hood tax. Asked to vote on whether we should the banks should be levied with a tax, the majority voted in favour, but against splitting the £20 billion saving and giving half to charitable causes (ie international development and environmental projects). Just a quarter of the audience wanted to plough half the money saved back into good causes.
It may well have been an audience of just 600, but that vote could be representative of what the public want.
So, is the Robin Hood tax going out of fashion just as fast as it came in?
Hi Lara,
It is the same all over the west:
We hate people living in poverty and we all want to help, BUT…only if we ourselves don’t have to make a step back.
That is why eventually the equal sharing of the planet’s resources is not going to happen.
Please don’t ask me for a solution of this situation…
Hi Lara
All the oinion polls before and after the election show that a significant minoirty really believe in international aid but a majority would be happy to see it cut. I don’t think the Tories see it as a big vote winner in itself, I think Cameron (I think most tories would happily vut it) sees it as a way of showing that the Tories have changed and that they ‘care’. it’s a relatively small budget anyway, so it doesn’t cost much and has a big impact on image….
Hi Lara, thanks for the “vignetta” (picture). It says a lot.
I have a feeling it might be…
@Johan, I think you are right but there is something sad about that. I think we in teh west would be much more happy if we allowed ourselves to take a few steps back materially.
As for the chances of ever sharing resources equally - you are probably right. But it is never a matter of complete inequality or complete equality. In every situation we can try to do the best thing.