Misplaced charity

THE Mail couldn’t be more pleased that Jeremy Corbyn is calling for Britain to keep increasing its huge foreign aid budget.

For nothing is more guaranteed to alienate traditional Labour voters, who rightly believe that with so much hardship in our own society and such savage cuts to our armed forces, spending over £13billion a year on aid – much of which goes to despots – is offensive.

Sensible Labour voters – indeed the vast majority of all voters – would rather that money were spent on the NHS, or solving the care crisis. IN an excoriating report, the National Audit Office says many degrees give such woeful value for money that if universities were operating in a regulated financial market they would be accused of ‘mis-selling’. With such a poor service, how do vice- chancellors have the nerve to accept pay packages of up to £470,000 a year and golden handshakes – as one did this week – of £800,000? THE Mail congratulates the Guardian on finally seeing the light and becoming a tabloid. True, it’s taken a long time and – through awesome business ineptitude – losses of hundreds of millions of pounds. We sincerely hope that by joining the tabloid club, the paper might now begin to make financial sense, rather than depend on massive subsidy. Just one bit of helpful advice. Commercially-viable tabloids – even mid-market ones like the Mail – rely on putting stories on their pages that actually

interest people.