Financial aid to other countries

[Coldicote]

Frequently in the news and on these pages there are references to money being sent overseas as aid to other countries. Today's news refers to 'the UK's promise' to spend 0.7% of its gross national income to overseas aid. I'm not wanting to be uncharitable, but what is the background to all this? Are we trying to make other countries 'obligated' to us for some reason?

[Caran]

charity begins at home

[Gromit]

^^^

I thought that was incest?

[anotheoldgit]

Just handing over huge sums of money to these so called undeveloped countries ie India and Pakistan is not the answer.

Since on paper both these countries are just as well off as Britain, their problem being they have their priorities all wrong, they will spend on nuclear weapons and entering into the space race, yet their peoples starve.

Better for these such countries to be condemned by the rest of the world and forced to take a more humane concern for their inhabitants.

[hc4361]

The UK is not the most generous when it comes to giving aid, as this chart shows.
http://upload.wikimed...4/45/2006_ODA_GNI.png

Ireland gives more than us, as a per centage (not much more).

We Brits seems to believe we are the only country that give international aid and the only country that has illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.

[rov1100]

""why do we insist on taking immigrants from third world over populated countries""

Gromit,I did not make up the comment, neither did I copy it verbatim, but a recollection of one of the readers snippets in the letters page.

Key words and points::, immigrants, countries with large populations, coming here, and producing the same