Aid, Britain, Government, Politics, Society

Foreign aid spending hits public trust

FOREIGN AID

MINISTERS are undermining trust in foreign aid by failing to ensure it is spent on the world’s poorest, a committee of MP’s have warned.

Projects funded through the £14billion budget include schemes to boost China’s film industry and to improve its museums.

Britain is legally committed to spending 0.7 per cent of gross national income on foreign aid, but the Commons international development committee called for that money to be focused on poverty reduction.

MPs specifically singled out the £600million Prosperity Fund, a cross-Whitehall pot that is still used to pay for foreign aid schemes in countries like India and China.

They raised questions about how it was funding projects in China to reduce tobacco consumption by migrant workers and to lower the salt intake of children.

The MPs said many of the dubious ventures were being run by Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office (FCO).

“Among the FCO-administered Prosperity Fund projects, we found many weaker examples including projects to develop the Chinese film industry, improve the Chinese museum infrastructure and improve the credit bond rating system in China,” they said.

The committee said it was unclear “how these types of interventions will benefit the very poorest people”. It called for a review of existing programmes.

“We are concerned to have uncovered Prosperity Fund projects within middle-income countries which show inadequate, or negligible, targeting at improving the lives of the very poorest and most vulnerable communities in these countries,” the report said.

Whitehall departments were also condemned for not being open about how they are doling out the £14billion budget.

Although most of the foreign aid budget is used by the Department for International Development (Dfid), other Government departments are increasingly having to help to get the money out the door.

More than a quarter (27.5 per cent) of the £14billion aid budget was spent by departments other than Dfid last year.

The report said while Dfid was “respected worldwide as an accountable deliverer of aid”, there was a lack of transparency elsewhere in Whitehall.

The committee warned that other Government departments were being given aid money to spend without having to explain how they would make sure it was used properly.

The MPs said: “Given the level of spending involved, we are concerned that departments are not publishing fuller details of their… spending as this lack of clarity clouds the public’s ability to see good and bad spending.”

They highlighted the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), which redacts information and refuses to publish how it uses much of its money. The MPs added: “This lack of clarity undermines trust in the fund.”

A spokesperson for the Government said: “We have been clear, we must ensure that the aid budget is not just spent well but could not be spent better and standards are raised across Government to achieve value for taxpayers’ money.”

Britain, Government, National Security, Society, United States

Spy chief speaks for the first time over unrepentant Snowden

NATIONAL SECURITY

BRITAIN’S ability to keep its citizens safe was compromised as a result of the intelligence leaks by US traitor Edward Snowden, a spy chief has revealed in an excoriating attack.

Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain’s eavesdropping agency GCHQ, said the unrepentant former spy had caused “real and unnecessary damage” to the security of the UK and its allies.

In his first remarks on the devastating impact of the security breach five years ago, he said the American fugitive, who is now living in exile in Russia, needed to be held to account for his “illegal” actions. His comments came as Snowden said he had “no regrets” about revealing sensitive information via the pages of The Guardian newspaper.

In a rare statement given on the anniversary of the biggest leak of secret documents in its history, Mr Fleming said: “GCHQ’s mission is to help keep the UK safe. What Edward Snowden did five years ago was illegal and compromised our ability to do that, causing real and unnecessary damage to the security of the UK and our allies. He should be accountable for that.”

Mr Fleming, who was deputy director general of MI5 until last year, also made clear that the agency was striving for greater transparency long before the leaks. In a pointed remark, he told The Guardian: “It’s important that we continue to be as open as we can be, and I am committed to the journey we began over a decade ago to greater transparency.”

His comments came as Snowden, 34, showed no remorse over leaking classified data from the US National Security Agency (NSA). Speaking to The Guardian, he said: “People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.

“The Government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now. People are still powerless to stop it, but we are trying. The revelations made the fight more even.” Asked if he had any regrets he said “no”, before adding: “If I had wanted to be safe, I would not have left Hawaii.”

Snowden was living in Hawaii while he worked as a security contractor for the NSA. It was there that he acquired the data he later leaked, including details of the precise methods used by the intelligence agencies to track terrorist plots. A year after the leaks – by which time Snowden had fled to Hong Kong before subsequently settling and given immunity in Russia – it was estimated that a quarter of the serious criminals being tracked by GCHQ had fallen off the radar because they had been alerted to the covert methods being used to track them.

Theresa May, then as Home Secretary, revealed how Britain’s ability to track terrorists and crime gangs was severely damaged because of the leaks. She said police and security services were finding it harder to monitor the electronic communications used by fanatics and master criminals.

The former head of GCHQ, Sir Iain Lobban, said in 2013 that terrorists were known to be “discussing how to avoid vulnerable communications methods.” And just last month, Bill Evanina, director of the US National Counter-intelligence and Security Centre, said Snowden’s leaks would continue to cause problems for years to come. He told a conference that only about 1 per cent of the documents taken by him had been released.

Arts, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry

The Stoic: ‘Steady’ or ‘Unsteady’

CLARITY

THIS article incorporates a poem dedicated by my friend Jan Smith from Liverpool. You will find the poem, entitled “Be Kind”, roughly at the mid-point of this entry. I thank Jan for allowing me to use and share her work on my site. She can be found on Twitter: @JanSmithNL

IF YOU WANT TO BE STEADY

“The essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice; just as the essence of evil is another kind. What about externals, then? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil in working with them. How will it find the good? Not by marveling at the material! For if judgments about the material that are straight makes our choices good, but if those judgments are twisted, our choices turn bad.” – Epictetus, Discourses, 1.29.1–3

THE Stoics seek steadiness, stability, and tranquility – traits most of us aspire to but seem to experience only fleetingly. How do they accomplish this elusive goal? How does one embody eustatheia (the word Arrian once used to describe this teaching of Epictetus)?

Well, it’s not luck. It’s not by eliminating outside influences or running away to quiet and solitude. Instead, it’s about filtering the outside world through the straightener of our judgment. That’s what our reason can do – it can take the crooked, confusing, and overwhelming nature of external events and make them orderly.

However, if our judgments are crooked because we don’t apply reason, then everything that follows will be crooked, and we will lose our ability to steady ourselves in the chaos and rush of life. If you want to be steady, if you want clarity, proper judgment is the best way.

IF YOU WANT TO BE UNSTEADY

“For if a person shifts their caution to their own reasoned choices and the acts of those choices, they will at the same time gain the will to avoid, but if they shift their caution away from their own reasoned choices to things not under their control, seeking to avoid what is controlled by others, they will then be agitated, fearful, and unstable.” – Epictetus, Discourses, 2.1.12

THE image of the Zen philosopher is the monk up in the green, quiet hills, or in a beautiful temple on some rocky cliff. The Stoics are the antithesis of this idea. Instead, they are the man in the marketplace, the senator in the Forum, the brave wife waiting for her soldier to return from battle, the sculptor busy in her studio. Still, the Stoic is equally at peace.

Epictetus is reminding you that serenity and stability are results of your choices and judgment, not your environment. If you seek to avoid all disruptions to tranquility – other people, external events, stress – you will never be successful. Your problems will follow you wherever you run and hide. But if you seek to avoid the harmful and disruptive judgments that cause those problems, then you will be stable and steady whatever and wherever you happen to be.

Creative Writing