NEW FOREIGN AID OUTRAGE
Scandal as £64m of your money is given to dictator
BRITAIN’S foreign aid policy was branded a “disgrace” yesterday.
It has emerged that Britain gave £64million of taxpayers’ cash to an African country ruled by a tyrant suspected of murdering his rivals.
Critics last night demanded a fresh purge on the generous handouts to the regime which is run by Rwandan president Paul Kagame.
The 59-year-old millionaire has been linked to the death, disappearance and imprisonment of dozens of opponents, as well as allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption.
But his regime has been rewarded with the bumper payout after being praised as “open and inclusive” by the Department for International Development.
Last night Ukip’s home affairs spokeswoman Jane Collins said the money was “a damning indictment of the UK’s disastrous foreign aid policy
and another reason for a complete rethink of where and how we provide aid”.
She added: “To spend money, taken from the pockets of British workers and give it to a regime with such an appalling human rights record is a disgrace.
“We must end our huge foreign aid budget and focus instead on sorting out spending priorities in this country – including reducing the national debt and ensuring proper border and policing and keep our aid to emergency funds.”
The latest payout emerged as the Government comes under increasing pressure to cut the UK’s £12billion annual overseas aid budget. David Cameron pledged to spend 0.7 per cent of Britain’s national income on foreign aid and Theresa May has maintained it.
But Tory MP Philip Hollobone said the over-commitment means we are forced to fund dubious countries and projects.
He said: “The fundamental problem is that we are spending too much on overseas aid and DfID cannot spend this money quickly enough, so it is going to inappropriate causes.”
A DfID report outlined the £64million aid package to “build effective Government institutions” and support “development of an open and inclusive society”.
It said Mr Kagame had a “strong record of using aid effectively”.
Mr Kagame, who is believed to control assets worth £350million, took the presidency 17 years ago. After “restructuring” the electoral system he could remain in power for the next 17 years.
But political opponents feared murdered include Illuminee Iragena, a member of the rival United Democratic Forces Party, who vanished on the way to work.
A former adviser of Kagame, cardiologist Emmanuel Gasakure, disappeared after complaining about missing funds to the health minister.
A DfID spokesman said: “All UK financial support in Rwanda is earmarked for specific programmes only, such as education. In all its dealing with Rwanda, the British Government holds them to account on governance, human rights and development issues.”
REMEMBER that outrageous day when President Barack Obama looked Britain in the eye and coldly warned us we’d be at the back of the queue to do a trade deal with the United States if we were crazy enough to vote for Brexit?
Guess what happens today… we miraculously jump to the front of that queue and start talks about a trade deal. Who would have thought it?
Certainly not the two world leaders who stood side by side in the marbled splendour of the Foreign Office that day in April 2016.
As Obama delighted Remain campaigners with his dire threat, prime minister David Cameron put on his very best glum face even though he must have been bursting with joy inside after enlisting the world’s most powerful man as a cheerleader for Project Fear.
They’ve both departed the public stage now, of course; Obama because his eight years at the White House were up and Cameron because he humiliatingly lost the referendum vote. His time was up too. Thank goodness the British public had the very good sense to ignore the pompous proclamations and doom-mongering of “the great and the good” and made the right choice to pull out of the EU.
None of Project Fear’s warnings of economic Armageddon came to pass; chancellor George Osborne said there would be an immediate recession, every family would be £4,000 a year worse off, unemployment would rise by half a million, foreign investment would flee our shores, there would be famine, pestilence and a plague of boils (OK, so I made that last bit up but his scaremongering did verge on political hysteria). Osborne has gone too so today he will be spared the public humiliation of being forced to eat even more of his words.
When International Trade Secretary Liam Fox shakes hands with US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in Washington it will signal the most crucial change in Anglo-EU relations since the referendum votes were cast. Britain will be telling Brussels that we are more than capable of standing on our own two feet – in fact we are going to prosper and flourish once Brexit takes effect in the spring of 2019.
The doom and gloom merchants are still pursuing their lost cause of belittling our economic strength but few people believe them because they have been totally discredited by their previous disingenuous outpourings. Why does the BBC still give so much airtime to all the bad losers who refuse to accept that voters knew exactly what they were doing when they plumped for Brexit? Why does it still sneer at us?
OBAMA claimed that Brexit would send a message of division to the world but the truth is that the present bullying tactics of the Brussels despots and their “negotiating” team send a different message, one of undemocratic divide and rule. Their egos are so vast that they cannot comprehend that any nation could consider it would be better off outside of their corrupt and sclerotic club.
Look what has happened in the lucky 13 months since the Brexit vote. Manufacturing output has grown every month, exports are up 16 per cent year on year, the fall in the pound has encouraged tourists to spend 14 per cent more and inflation has now dropped back to 2.6 per cent. The world wants to do business with us because once we are finally free of the shackles of the EU we will be able to strike deals that enable us to exploit the massive trade advantages that come from having a currency that is no longer over-valued.
It might make foreign holidays dearer but so what? The 17.4 million who voted to leave the EU did so with their eyes wide open. We were perfectly happy to vote for a little shortterm pain in return for the massive long-term gain.
We can judge the potential size of that gain by the company we are now able to keep as we belatedly realise that the EU is powerless to stop us. It can huff and puff and threaten all it likes but the fact is that very soon we will be an independent sovereign nation again and our destiny will be in our own hands. On Friday night Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson met the Japanese trade minister in Tokyo and promised an “all-singing, all-dancing” trade deal would be on the way. We’ve already opened preliminary talks with China, the world’s second largest economy, to give that country even greater access to investment opportunities in the UK. Australia, New Zealand and even Turkey are waiting in the wings to sign high-value deals too.
SINCE the referendum there have been 2,200 separate foreign investments in the UK. Some of them are on a massive scale – Softbank bought the British technology company Arm for £24billion and Nissan is putting two more models on the production line at its North-east car plant, safeguarding thousands of jobs.
Great Britain plc is on the up and up and it’s vital that we keep our nerve and continue to ignore all those who try to talk us down. (BBC please note.)
The revelation that our population has grown by 250,000 every year for the past 12 years shows the urgent need for decisive action so we have control over immigration, letting in workers as the economy grows – but at a sensible rate. We need steel in the Cabinet, not waffle about a soft Brexit.
‘Brexit means Britain can prosper and grow’