What do we think about ring-fencing foreign aid? Is it only UKIP supporters that think we should revise our generous contribution down from 0.7% to 0.2%, whatever that means in actual terms?
Only, I can understand that there are various reasons, other than the purely altruistic, why it’s best practice to forge good relations with various developing nations and that ultimately, helping them helps us.
But hearing tales of corruption and misappropriation of £millions of Dfid dosh makes you think again.
There is one aspect of the current scenario that could arguably justify a sizeable sum of our foreign aid budget being redirected back from whence it came. The fact that terrorism is a global problem, ignited abroad, carried out by idiots recruited from abroad and aided and abetted by home-grown and foreign sympathisers of our enemies overseas. Foreign stuff.
So why shouldn’t we should divert a large chunk of our foreign aid budget back home to defend ourselves against foreign-propagated violence and use it to fund extra police, additional counter-terrorism manpower and generally expand whatever services are deemed necessary to keep us safe?
