Spending Money that the Country doesn't have!

Anti-corruption group Transparency International reports that 'Britain gave more than £1 billion to some of the world’s most corrupt countries in 2013, possibly even helping fund extremism, despite numerous warnings that the money was being misspent'.
And that 'Even North Korea, with its oppressive communist regime, received money from the British government'.
The Daily Mail gives more detail.

Giving away money we don't have and incurring interest on that money hardly seems to be a very clever way of restoring the country's fortunes, especially as the government is now spending more paying interest on borrowed money than it is on defence.

This billion pounds, of course, is just the money given to some of the world’s most corrupt countries, nothing is said about that given away elsewhere to countries like India which can afford a space programme or to Argentine which never has a word of good for this country. There was even money given to Venezuela, a  country which is oil rich but remains in poverty due to incompetent government.

The biggest joke, if it wasn't so serious, is the statement by The Department for International Development last night that "it took a zero-tolerance approach to corruption". Indeed it claims that it doesn't give money to the some of the countries mentioned, but that it given through organisations like the United Nations, which is not much of a recommendation as the UN itself is hardly free from corruption.

That was in 2013, and this year Cameron adopted the UN aid target which required a 30 per cent increase in the UK aid budget to £11.5 billion. Whilst this has been ignored by most of the world’s major economies, our government is pressing ahead and it seems that our officials are just giving away money by the bucket load without thought, simply to spend the budget on schedule.

No doubt ministers will be going to the UN patting themselves on the back at having spent money that the country hasn't got to meet a UN target simply plucked out of thin air. Or perhaps someone is expecting a nice sinecure with the UN when he doesn't get re-elected next May.