Aid for ‘gimmicks’ and the corrupt
The Mail has led the way in reporting how British taxpayers’ money has fallen into the hands of the corrupt, been wasted on gimmicks and – in some cases – been lavished on projects that didn’t exist. Examples include:
UK taxpayers picked up a £ million bill to fund Ethiopia’s own Spice Girls. Yegna, a fivestrong group, launched a radio show and released a string of videos that aim to empower women in the African country. Even some Ethiopians said the money is being wasted because the show reaches only a quarter of the population. Millions of pounds was spent on a scheme aimed at reducing the flatulence of Colombian cattle. The £15million grant to ranchers and other organisations was part of a £2.9billion package of ‘climate aid’ to developing countries. The idea was to improve animal diets and in doing so reduce the amount of methane escaping through belching and flatulence. Money has been endlessly tipped into the EU’s aid coffers – despite an audit showing that £11.5billion of the £23billion doled out by Brussels each year fails to achieve its stated aims. Ingeborg Graessle, chairman of the European Parliament’s committee on budget control, said the EU was ‘effectively throwing money down the toilet’. Some £25million was spent funding a project that involved teaming up meteorologists with Kenyan ‘rain-makers’, who predict the weather by watching the movement of ants and measuring the wind using the tops of earthenware bottles. Britain committed £700million to help impoverished children in Pakistan but corrupt officials creamed off vast amounts. In one province, it was found that the money was diverted to as many as 5,000 schools and 0,000 teachers that did not exist. Britain is still throwing money at India – wealthy enough to fund its own space programme – despite its finance minister saying in 2012: ‘We do not require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development spending.’ The figure was £279million in 201 . It is due to be cut sharply to less than £100million but will not totally vanish for years. The tiny central African nation of Rwanda was handed up to £66million a year despite the bloodstained reputation of its iron man leader Paul Kagame, who says corruption ‘kills a nation’ yet has two £30million private jets and a sprawling countryside estate. Ex-Chancellor George Osborne was lambasted for pledging £3million for a Premier League scheme to train a new generation of football stars in super-rich China. MPs called it a ‘tragically daft’ waste of money.