Overseas Development To Stop Funding Ethiopian Girl Band

[lindapalmara]

Common sense prevails. Apparently the millions they have already paid to this is to empower women. So by showing these scantily clad women on TV all oppressed women and girls will rise up and shed their burkas?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38538631

Victory for the Daily Mail who campaigned to stop this madness!

[Old_Geezer]

It's a possibility longer term if it starts being seen as normal rather than obscene.

[fiction-factory]

Yes, it does seem this was not money well spent, even thought the claimed aim of empowering women is a more worthwhile one than that of just supporting a girl band. The money will now be spent on something else (since the foreign aid expenditure is a fixed amount by law) but hopefully it will be spent on something that will be for a more worthy cause, or will bring visible benefits for the recipients and the UK, and will make everyone involved think more carefully about how all our foreign aid is being used.

[mushroom25]

seems to me that the way international aid is handed out today is just a vanity project for the metropolitan elite, to make themselves feel good and to show the world their caring credentials.

rather than our government throwing money at food aid for disadvantaged citizens of the third world, wouldn't it be better to use that cash to offset the nations' enormous debts, and allow their governments to help themselves?

[aelmpvw]

i still don't know what the 5.2 million has been spent on ...

[ToraToraTora]

now stop the rest of this £12billion annual give away. Worse than the kin EU!

[fiction-factory]

It's money we gave, knowing what it would be spent on, so we can't expect to get it back, Fender. The best we can hope for in the short to medium term is that foreign aid will be allocated more wisely in future. In the longer term let's hope the law requiring us to pay 0.7% of our GDP (which means we spend £12 billion pa) will be looked at and hopefully scrapped , and our expenditure could be trimmed a bit- although there seems o be only one party- uKIP, who wants to cut it , and some parties want us to spend more

[baza]

Girl bands, an airport on a windswept island, how many other worthwhile causes could this aid be spent on.

[andy-hughes]

Although the notion of 'empowerment' sounds a good idea, in this instance it reeks of 'right-on' trendy thinking by people who nowhere near enough about what was being offered by this money.

It comes down to this - the money has been spent on a massive ad campaign to put this band in front of the public, and it has worked. They have a successful career, and their songs are in the charts.

So - has this 'empowered' Ethiopian women in the way the money would have been justified?

No.

Why not?

Because the band will be heard and seen by urban city dwellers who are already empowered, and do not need pop pap to increase that empowerment. Where empowerment is needed is in restrictive rural communities where women are far more repressed, but by virtue of precisely that oppression, this band are never going to be seen and heard by the women who actually need the message they are supposed to transmit, the concept of empowerment they are supposed to exhibit.

And finally, did no-one consider that the language these songs are delivered in is a well-known, but by no means nationally understood language - so this ludicrous idea is tantamount to asking The Spice Girls to empower UK women, and then have then sing in Gaelic!

The whole idea was carried along by novelty and vanity, like so many of the crack-brained schemes London-centric politicians dream up as ways to spend other people's money.

They should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

[DaisyNonna]

Squander bugs

[ToraToraTora]

" The Spice Girls to empower UK women, and then have then sing in Gaelic! " - that explains a lot Andy!

[andy-hughes]

TTT - //" The Spice Girls to empower UK women, and then have then sing in Gaelic! " - that explains a lot Andy! ..

It doesn't explain anything, because you have taken part of a sentence and quoted it out of context.

Do you have a point you wish to make?

[Gromit]

// crack-brained schemes London-centric politicians dream up //

I like that, can I steal it AH?