With thanks to Old Holborn via Subrosa Blonde.
In the past, my anger with DFID has been focused main;y on its channeling through CDC of funds to private companies benefiting senior New Labour hacks. But this news makes me even more angry.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6982999.ece
Returning to CDC, I would like to think that the Tories will sort it out. My expectation, however, is that the companies it subsidises have already started recruiting senior Tories as directors.
Have you been to the May Day celebrations in London (known more recently as the ‘riots’)? I was humbled, a few years ago, to find workers from around the world uniting together under union banners. As a lifelong freelance it made me realise that often people’s only protection is in union.
If the TUC are in bed with the government, it is no source of joy. But UNITE, particularly, have stood out as opposition to the war, and, although the stories which get reported are of the ‘union fucked me over’ variety, I know many more cases when it hasn’t.
Of course, union ‘leaders’ have been known to play golf with big bosses. And still do. But in that case, the unions need to look at their ‘leaders’. As we all do, it seems.
My own union probably saved my life when I was under attack in the FCO. I am not anti-union. But they should be paid for by their members, not the taxpayers, and definitely not from the overseas aid budget.
I can see an argument for trade unions being funded by the overseas aid budget. Many UK trade unions have given aid and support to other trade unions (people) around the world; the workers’ movement is an international one. And the people it tends to support – low-waged, exploited – are the people the DFID also has a brief to support – in its stated aim of ‘reduction of poverty’.
I’m not sure if that argument has or will be made, or that the DFID’s other aim of ‘promoting development’ will not inevitably take precedence. I am sure, though, that trade unions will end up being funded by their members, and that is no bad thing, I agree.
Except, as you say in another post, it represents this government moving, publicly, a step away from supporting decency (is there a better word? I feel like Hugh Grant when I use it)
But why am I surprised?
Unions have had international depts for many decades – very laudable it is too, if they fund it themselves.
British workers need strong unions as never before, basically as their advocates in an unfair society.
There are two more main reasons imo.
Unions are stalwart opponents of the growing threat from the nasty racist far-right in Britain.
Unions work for all legal immigrants to Britain, standing up for their rights and dignity.
But I agree that foreign aid is also very important, crucial even, particularly in the education of girls and their rights to reproductive health.
Time to put my oar in.
DFID pick thier own programmes for funding overseas. As Craig will know they spent millions on the dis-armament campaign for demobolised RUF fighters in Sierra Leone a few years ago. I know cos I was there and working for DFID.
The amount of money they wasted in projects that were going nowhere was stunning. For example they rented 5 helicopters from a Ukranian outfit for $8000 a day each and never used them for 2 months. DFID also spent about 2 million quid on a borehole programme that was f****d from the start as me and others were telling them from day one.The list is endless, so I am not surprised that some pen pushing f***wit in London chuckes money at the Unions.
Give ME the money and I will use it to clear more minefields here in Africa.
Department For International Dickwads more likely !
I have never belonged to a union but have been helped by SSAFA (a sort of union) in the past and I am extremely grateful to them. Union members pay a fee out of their wages (as I did in the Royal Navy) and any extra help whatever the source is greatly appreciated and used for a good cause – the protection and sustainment of peoples lives. Or is that too naive?
Back in July 2009, you may recall the VESTAS closer and worker occupation, on the Isle of Wight. Almost exclusively, the ‘union’ presence that was televised was that of Bob Crow’s RMT. The local long standing unions were virtually ignored by the media, even though they made up about half the presence at gatherings outside the courts.
I was impressed on how well funded the RMT crowed were, with everything brand new and made to order, including an armoured communications Jeep. They were there in force for weeks, with regular visits from a light plane carrying various banners.
Where did Bob get that kind of battle funding?
Are ZanuLabour feeding the unions in readiness for a final Bolshevik Parthian shot? The ultimate melt-down of a stricken Britain by the Marxist unions, inspiring the final economic catastrophe, in response to the Tories inevitable victory? If so, expect union led strikes and rioting; not so much for the advertised benefit of the workers, but more their unsolicited use as stalking horses for the hidden agenda of Marxism by default.
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it.”
?” Political economist Frederic Bastiat, The Law (1850)
“The good times of too-high price almost always engender much fraud. All people are most credulous when they are most happy; and when much money has just been made,there is a happy opportunity for ingenious mendacity.”
Walter Bagehot, Lombard Street 1873
A good chunk of this money is effectively going to end up back in Labour’s election campaign coffers isn’t it? What with Trade Union support for the party. That’s the staggeringly cynical thing. Eye-watering, in fact.
@Frazer: are you Australian or Kiwi by any chance?
@Rob. Scottish
@Frazer: was confusing you with someone else, I think.
Alistair Campbell is being interviews on Radio five live as I type this. Will he be asked anything as to the communications during the time of Dr. Kelly’s death?
I am appalled at the revellations of noLabours greasing gang and I salute the Timnes for doing so, it has risen in my estimation.
Completely o/t (it never takes more than dozen posts for that to happen on this site), but great Guantanamo story on the beeb…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8452937.stm
The whole DFID-CDC-Actis imbroglio has been investigated in detail in Private Eye over the last couple of years. CDC (Commonwealth Development Corporation) is supposed to invest public money in developing countries as an aid to development, yet their activities have morphed into straightforward investment-for-return. PEye has a lot more on this, and it is very unsavoury. The TUC connection is just horribly depressing.
Oh dear, first it was the …. then the homosexuals and priests and finally….
Alan Johnson has banned Islam4UK, not the EDL or the NF, both prone to the odd terrorising and nail bombing, which makes it very clear as to who is being targetted and who is not.
So who is next?
Frazer,
I like your oar.
“Give ME the money and I will use it to clear more minefields here in Africa”
There is no more efficient use of money, than to empower people on the ground, who know what work needs to be done, and how to actually do it.
In some organisations in the days before Nu-Labour, that was how things were actually done. Relatively junior people on the workface, would put up a good case, explaining what needed to be done, and management would devolve their responsibility and allocate the funds. Thats what good management is all about.
Now everything has changed. Extremely well paid bureaucrats go to endless meetings talking complete nonsense amongst themselves, and spending all the money thesmelves on entertaining each other. They then make dictatorial decisions without having any understanding of the detail of the work that needs to be done, and then hire their mates they met on the golf course as extremely high paid consultants to throw even more money away. Virtually no useful work gets done, and the organisation goes bust – and the criminals walk away with whats left.
Tony
Postman Patel…
http://tinyurl.com/yrt3yg
ingo,
More likely who is the next ‘patsy’ that will reveal massive holes in the security services communication lines. I find in ‘interesting’ that all these people have radical backgrounds and reams of information unfold 24hrs after the event.
Brits are well seasoned in deriding the exploitation of fear to push through an agenda, nevertheless the Civil Contingencies Bill takes away the right of Habeas Corpus and the Emergency powers ensure main electricity sub-stations can be powered down remotely but do not affect the telephone service.(999) It is therefore crucial to have back-up supplies in the form of a personal 240 volt generator.
Thanks Tony, I believe that is a perfect description of the United Nations.
@Frazer: [racking brain] Did you ever do any stuff with the DfiD in Basra?
@Rob..I have been to Basra but not with DFID.
@Frazer: I wonder if there’s any possiblity I spoke to you on the phone about a year and a half ago regarding the Basra Development Fund, doing background on an article I was writing that got spiked… If not you then a colleague of yours, because I *think* I know the consultancy you work for (if that’s the right word).
I imagine that New Labour expects in return for its bribe that the TUC during the forthcoming general election will exert an influence against voter apathy which could help the Tories.
@Rob yup, that was me. Small world.