Foreign aid corruption begins closer to home

IF your correspondent Mr Vickers would extend his reading beyond the Mail and Express regarding Third World impoverishment (I recommend to him Jason Hickel’s The Divide) then he would know that for every dollar given in aid to the poorest countries it extracts nine from them by various improper and illegal means, including exorbitant compound interest - on old and new debts - unfair pricing, unequal trade, tax evasion and misinvoicing.

Centuries of imperialism enriched the colonial powers at the expense of their colonies - and neo-colonialism via greedy banks, corporations and imposed austerity programmes (viz Tunisia at present) continues to do so.

Of course, Mr Vickers claims that little of the money donated by rich countries to poor countries reaches hungry mouths.

This contains a half-truth due to the vile greed of “friendly” dictators which the US, UK and France have conspired, postwar, to install to replace reformminded politicians who had the audacity to tax and nationalise their mining and oil interests.

If local corruption persuades Mr Vickers that foreign aid is a total fraud and that salves his conscience, so be it.

However, if he wants to fund the NHS better, perhaps he should look at the absurd Trident project and the £100 billion plus it will swallow up, while the sick lie on trolleys and homelessness increases.

John Payne