The paper's bizarre find-cash-quick scheme sinks - then plumbs the depths
Part of the humour to be found in this morning’s Sun scoop is at the expense of the paper.
‘UK taxes blown on lonely fish in Africa… But our military is cut to the bone’
As might not be clear, the paper is arguing the government wastes foreign aid money on silly things while the defence budget is being cut.
If the connection between the two things still seems strange, it’s worth bearing in mind that defence secretary, Michael ‘stab-in-the-back’ Fallon, has suggested the budgets for foreign aid and defence be blurred to reach NATO’s recommended 2 per cent of GDP spending target.
Helpfully, the Sun has launched a campaign – ‘Forces not Farces’ – to call on the government to do, er, what it was already planning to do.
But back to the fish. It seems the foreign office spent £3,400 to help protect and breed a rare tropical fish at risk of extinction. That’s £3,400 out of a total foreign aid budget of £11.7billion.
Another case on the Sun’s charge sheet:
“The department also gave £2,042-worth of free tickets to children for a Hamlet production in the earthquake-ravaged Caribbean nation of Haiti.”
What a heartless newspaper this is! Let Nemo die and no Hamlet for the Haitian kids!
More amusing is the Sun’s ‘evidence’ this money could pay for more worthy things at home – the entire burden of their argument.
It takes one of the most expensive of its cases, £51,564 on UK work experience for people from Serbia, and says this ‘could have bought advanced armour for 50 British troops’. For an army of 90,000 (and that’s just regular forces), this seems hardly worth ditching the Serbs.
And shouldn’t UK troops have the best armour available regardless?
It goes on:
“£30,000 spent ’empowering Indian museum professionals’ – could have paid a nurse on £21,692 for 15 months.”
One nurse! For just over a year! And on a starting salary at that. This is desperate stuff.
They only provide two more examples – £99,800 on shale gas drilling regulations in China ‘could have built five mini-roundabouts’, and £3,104 spent on English training for Uruguayan footballers ‘could have bought two lampposts’.
Some of this foreign aid spending is very odd indeed, and it would be fascinating to know what the FCO was up to. But the amount of money involved is minuscule in terms of the aid budget, let alone government spending generally. And the army should be properly funded regardless.
Meanwhile, the Sun’s attempts to show this money could buy us all sorts of goodies is laughable.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
Read more:
Bonfire of the bills: Tory press hails scrapping tax credits and Child Poverty Act
The Sun spins Osborne’s £7bn loss into £14bn ‘profit’ in RBS sale coverage
Sign up for our weekly email by clicking here.
35 Responses to “The Sun thinks killing a tropical fish will fund the armed forces”
Jimbo
What an interesting specimen you are-somebody who’s actually taken in and convinced by The Sun. God help us.
gunnerbear
I was responding to the point made in the comment by the author – he wants UK taxpayers cash wasted overseas. The author would rather see UK taxpayers cash spent abroad instead of on UK citizens – with attitudes like that is it any wonder the Left got smashed in the election and the sooner David Cameron bins the aid spending – except for around £2bn in emergency relief – the better.
dnspncr
Cameron bin aid spending? Don’t make me laugh. The Foreign Office said today that it is “reviewing” how it spends overseas aid and will “check whether every penny spent represented value for money.”
Gee, I wonder why a political party that is dedicated to limiting government interference, a party that has passed its responsibility to protect severely disabled citizens to cash-strapped local authorities, why on earth would they want to send money to foreigners..? FFS
To quote Nixon; “Let us remember that the main purpose of aid is not to help other nations but to help ourselves.”
stevep
Utter right-wing tripe. Many citizens living in beleaguered regimes over the last 80-odd years have relied on the BBC to deliver an impartial source of news and information, often listening to it in preference to their own media and at great personal risk.
Show some respect.
stevep
Quite.