Reputation
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?
International aid is best summed up as ‘poor people in rich countries giving their money to rich people in poor countries’, such is the level of corruption involved.
In practice, much of the UK’s foreign aid takes the form of a colonial guilt-trip, sucking up to former colonies who don’t feel the need to feed themselves. Maybe you should tell the Irish Government to apply for a few billions.
But the UK also still sends aid to China, for Christ’s sake, where’s the sense in that?
I didn’t vote for this institutional stupidity,and further more the cretins in government are borrowing money to give it away.
Again, it’s the leftist media either assuming everyone thinks like them (I suppose that within their bubble, they do), OR attempting to persuade others by pretending their worldview is such a majority that anyone thinking otherwise is beyond the pale.
No one I know sees Anal-Ease as a person of intellect or of substance. Her resignation will pass without ruffling a blade of grass, and her replacement will no doubt be equally ineffective. Only Lammy, the dismal foreign secretary (and in typing hose words I can scarcely believe them) will miss her.
They are all a part of why this government became less popular than the Conservatives in just 14 weeks (rather than the 14 years it took the Tories) and why it’s widely viewed as the least intelligent cabinet of all time.
Dead right, Professor!
With no real commercial experience in the ridiculous Labour front bench, her only job was to chuck our taxes to the wrong despots everywhere, and she was incapable of realising that they may just be a few pensioners in the UK, who could do with a few quid to tide them over until Spring arrives.
These blinkered nobodies just administer – badly – the wealth created by the UK private sector, and have only started whingeing because The Donald has started the clear-out!
Mind you, my MP was Tory Greg Clark, and he wasn’t much better in the same Chuck-Cash non-job…
Absolutely right Scrobs.
It’s depressing that as they looked from one to another, the humans and the pigs (sorry, I meant Conservatives and Labour), there was no difference at all.
With all necessary apologies to Orwell, of course!
Being a woke Leftist lunatic, and of course a pig, working 22 hours a week for 33 weeks a year for €60,000 p.a (it’s called being a teacher in a private school in Ireland) and relying on the Leftist Financial Times for all of my news (I only read pink newspapers). I can testify to how British overseas aid enhanced British reputation. I was in Rwanda five times between 2009 and 2015, during which time Rwanda joined the Commonwealth and switched its second language to English (and check Transparency International for corruption indices).
Rory Stewart has written on the importance of overseas aid, but having been a Conservative minister, I suspect he is regarded as much a pig as myself.
Have you ever heard of ‘anecdotal evidence’?
Your post merely demonstrates one case. It feels like we are being invited to assume it is representative of something, but there is no data upon which to base that assertion.
So, I’m glad if your story is replicated elsewhere. I offer only two addendums.
1. I don’t really care about Rwanda. I mean to say I wish them no harm at all. Their country has been through hell and they deserve a better future. But they are not my responsibility. The UK cannot pay its own bills, let alone those of the rest of the world.
2. I suspect, though I acknowledge I also have only anecdotal evidence, that this is not replicated elsewhere.
Rory Stewart is a leading member of the uniparty. I cannot see any meaningful difference between him and Starmer, or Blair, or Davey, for that matter.