There is a piece on the BBC news site today.

Minister resigns over cuts to overseas aid, saying UK’s reputation will be deeply harmed

The actual resignation mentioned is of little interest to me [and probably to the vast majority of UK citizens]. They come, they go and the world carries on.

What interested me is the concept of “reputation”. It got me thinking. What is its significance? What does it even mean?

The implication is of course that hundreds of millions of Europeans will be horrified by the move and will spend their entire waking lives saying what a load of mean-fisted bastards the Brits are. I think this is rather unlikely and I would imagine that anyone who reads the item will shrug and move on to something more important [“Residents advised to buy earplugs as lighthouse fog alarm malfunctions“? Heh!]. Even supposing the entire population is horrified by the UK’s move then so what? I would wager my entire estate that not one Englishman [and the others] will be accosted over this.

Maybe she’s talking about reputation amongst other gubmints? Again, I would ask so fucking what? Sticks and stones may break your bones but words…. ?

Maybe it’s a reputation amongst Brits? This actually brings me to another point. How many tax payers have a burning desire to send a portion of their earnings to foreign aid and have explicitly told their gubmint to allocate a chunk to support dictatorships and corrupt officials? Is there a little tick-box on tax return forms? I don’t think so.

Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan have reputations for being medieval hell holes and that is probably well deserved. I will avoid those places.

Britain has a reputation for being mean with foreign aid?

So fucking what?