UK charity keeps on giving but where is the money spent – and why?

We are one of the world’s most consistent and most generous donors of aid, explains Tim Flinn

Those heartbreaking pictures of dying donkeys, starved dogs, pot-bellied children, begging asylum seekers, wheelchair veterans, cancer victims, heart victims – we’ve all seen the adverts.

Probably our generosity has helped finance them so that even more cash rolls in a steady stream; we’ve made a gift that keeps on giving. Charity is a genuine virtue and every little helps. I’m sure it does. But who else does it help?

The UK is one of the world’s most consistent and most generous donors of aid. Sixty years ago as an economics student I was lectured to the effect that if we siphoned off an annual 0.75 per cent of GDP to the developing world (we called it the Third World then) within a decade all those nations would achieve economic ‘take-off ’ and become sustainably self reliant.

Only ten years? What an investment! The UK government concurred as did several others. Yet here we are half a century or more on and still the developing world has its hand out.

The billions of charity money invested in the supplicants ought by now to have eliminated further need, instead it’s greater. On May 23rd this year we learned that the United Nation’s total spending on AIDS, malaria, hepatitis and tuberculosis was exceeded by the UN’S spending on travel related to these diseases.

Travel around bit yourself into foreign parts and you’ll discover that UN staffers after a hot day sort-