If anyone needed more evidence - and readers of C@W probably don't - that international transfer payments are a nonsense, this sorry story of gross abuse of the UN's REDD scheme for preventing deforestation pretty much sums it all up. CAP-style corruption writ large: don't they ever learn ?Accepting that the pass has long since been sold as regards many aspects of the EC, a basic principle of future policy must be - no levies to be paid to supra-national bodies.
The environment is a major area in which such things are being proposed all the time - the EC is perennially discussing a carbon tax, and someone always suggests it should be levied and dispensed centrally. Likewise, the shifty eyes of the Commission are on the proceeds of nationally-raised Bank Levies - although M.Barnier seems to have been put back in his box for the time being ("we are not proposing any single federal fund" - which is not what he was hoping for a few months ago). And of course the fatuous (and doomed) Robin Hood Tax is wanted for ill-specified international application:
Q: How would you [sic] spend the Robin Hood Tax ? A: "We [sic] want to see half the proceeds earmarked for spending internationally"
Like the poor, the woolly-minded are always with us; but we can demand better of policy-makers. The price of the extraordinary privilege of ring-fencing that is being enjoyed by overseas aid ( and who on earth nobbled Cameron on that one ?) must indeed be "ruthless" scrutiny.
ND
Isn't foreign aid just our slush fund for getting what we (or our major employers) want from foreign governments?
ReplyDeleteAm I being cynical beyond my years again?
There is no reason why anyone should accept the Cleggerons' ring fencing of DfID - it is not a given. DfID should be scrapped. In the rare cases when disaster relief is needed, it can be administered by the FCO which already has boots on the ground.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Also, what Budgie says. It's be the quickest and least painless way of saving £10 billion a year that you can imagine.
ReplyDeletewhich brings us back to the question: who nobbled Cameron ? I have to believe it was a very 1 - 1 piece of personal lobbying, and it has 0 to do with the Libs because the ringfence pre-dates the election by months if not longer
ReplyDeletewhoever it was has a strange power over the man ...
"who nobbled Cameron ?"
ReplyDeleteNo one - that's what he is.
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ReplyDelete