No change to Overseas Aid spend

Friday 27th January 2012, 1:44PM GMT.

OVERSEAS AID spending will be maintained at its current level of £2.5m. a year plus inflation, the States agreed this morning.

Despite amendments from Deputies Mike Hadley, pictured, and Rhoderick Matthews the Policy Council report escaped unscathed.

The United Nations overseas aid target is 0.7% of Gross National Product – for Guernsey that would be another £11.5m. a year.

Current spending is 0.13% of GNP.

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View more: Overseas Aid news.

1
Ray

January 27, 2012 at 2:45 pm

Despite the fact that Deputy Dorey will be warning the States in March that we will need to somehow find up to 20M more to help our own people out of poverty, the following Deputies were anxious to display their credentials for increased largesse with taxpayers money …
Hadley,Matthews,Gollop,Brehaut,Paint,Fallaize,
Dorey and Le Lievre

Even Carol Steere, chair (or former chair)of the Overseas Aid Committee urged caution

Make of that what you will on your April ballot paper

By the way does anyone know what the up to date definition of poverty is? I expect it will be quite surprising

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2
Zab

January 27, 2012 at 9:44 pm

Well said Ray post 1, sort out our own first, the middle class can salve thier consience out of their own pocket! The time for some equability in our society is well overdue as is the time for a lot of our failed representatives to heed the words of Churchill to Mc Millan “Go and go now”.
Maybe I am a cynic but I fully expect the last spiteful act of this house to be to try and put the kybosh on the proposals to help the kids and pensioners sidelined by their failed policies.
I for one am prepared to stand on St Jules roundabout with a placard, this injustice must end.

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- zab
  
  January 28, 2012 at 7:45 am
  
  For the pedantic,I do realise it was Chamberlain not Mc Millan but I had already hit the tab.
  
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3
Simon

January 28, 2012 at 6:50 am

disgusting

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- Ray
  
  January 28, 2012 at 9:38 am
  
  Simon
  
  I’m all for short and to the point posts but yours is perhaps a little too ambiguous?
  
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4
Brian

January 28, 2012 at 11:27 am

Ray

Great post Ray, makes my decision about where to put my X in April a lot easier!

Some of the deputies have no understanding of the word “prudence”

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5
hobbesvlocke

January 28, 2012 at 8:20 pm

“Hate, hate, hate. Let’s all get together and have a good hate.”

So said George Bowling, the narrator in George Orwell’s 1939 novel “Coming up for Air”. He was describing a certain type of speaker who could stir up ill feeling in an audience.

He could also quite easily have been referring to some of the threads in the Your Shout forum.

Some say that the biggest issue for the next States is to ensure that Guernsey’s finance industry continues to prosper. Indeed, we have seen how our industries can be endangered by a mere pen stroke of the UK Chancellor. And he seems ready to use some more ink to inconvenience us still further.

Given the divisive nature of some of the posts on this thread and others, I believe that the State’s biggest task is to lead and unite the people of Guernsey to common cause.

This particular thread highlights the fact that many people don’t want to increase foreign aid. This is entirely understandable.

Until we all get the idea that, at some level, Guernsey people are looking out for each other instead of, all the time, furthering individual interests, few will be interested in helping others far, far less fortunate than ourselves.

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6
Neil

January 30, 2012 at 2:35 pm

I have no problem with an Island of this wealth donating a percentage of its GDP to Overseas Aid.

What I have a huge problem is the absolute distrust of where our money goes. I believe Jersey takes on specific projects like school building? Where we throw it into a greater pot?

We are small and agile enough to get people involved through youth groups and the VSO to talk to any large organisation and tell them ‘Give us a project we’ll do it and fund it’.

Obviously there will be instances of great global disaster where that isn’t possible and we will just ‘donate’.

The principal of donating is fine; what supporters of OA never really understood is that there is a reasonable percentage of Islanders that simply don’t trust the global charitable system.

We are brighter; we could do a lot more ourselves. Until I’m convinced that our money is being spent wisely I can barely agree to the spending that we have now.

I can’t find anything about the Overseas Aid on the Government site right now. So if they can’t even publish what we are donating to now, what hope convincing us of upping that spend.

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- Paul Le Page
  
  January 30, 2012 at 10:07 pm
  
  I agree Neil. Throwing money into a pot without accountability is foolish – especially when there are excellent local charities that work overseas.
  
  Tumaini Project, Bridge to Sri Lanka and Hope for a Child are just three off the top of my head. All have locally based directors so local accountability is there. It would also provide the opportunity to tangibly see the benefits of our giving which, I believe, would increase support for Overseas Aid.
  
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7
Ray

January 30, 2012 at 7:27 pm

Time to wheel out the Daily Mail again!

Last Friday’s two page spread on the state of Haiti after two years of ‘aid’suggests that many locals rue the day when they were swamped by well meaning people from the aid industry

Although new homes have been built and damaged properties repaired there are still 520,000 people in squalid camps where violence,rape and paedophilia is rampant

Humanitarian staff earning ten times the local average salary are driving up local rents.Food,basic supplies and bottled water now cost several times as much as they did before the disaster

One car dealer sold more than 250 Toyota Land Cruisers a month to the numerous agencies in the aftermath of the earthquake.There are traffic jams at noon every Friday as the aid organisation’s staff finish early and head for the beaches

The major charities are still holding on to at least one third of the cash they raised from worldwide donations and the American Red Cross has more cash in its coffers than the £107 million donated by the UK

So many promises were broken,so much money was wasted that some locals are saying that it might have been better if they had not come

Only one agency appears to have justified its presence ..Medecins Sans Frontieres,which had already worked in Haiti for twenty years closed its appeal for donations after a few days as it had raised enough for its needs.Its head of mission believes that it is wrong for charities to raise more than they could spend but conceded that ‘the humanitarian business is no different to any other business’

That is of course no reason for Guernsey to cease giving aid when and where it is needed but as Neil says funding specific identifiable projects to their conclusion might be a better way than just throwing cash into a big pot

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