We're now paying for india's navy as it spends our £280m aid on warships

ani82v

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Same whine again!

We're now paying for India's Navy as it spends our £280m aid on warships | UK News | Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express

Britain is still handing over £280million a year despite India admitting it doesn't need the help and regards the amount as "peanuts".

As the Royal Navy suffers severe budget cuts, India has splashed out on Russian-built frigates, including one said to carry the world's fastest Cruise missile. The news follows this month's announcement that India is planning a £50million unmanned spacecraft mission to Mars.

Conservative MP Philip Davies said: "It seems to me that a country that spends billions on defence is more than capable of looking after its own people without £280million a year from British taxpayers. They could just spend £280million less on defence.

"Also, the money we give to India we have to borrow, so by the time we have repaid it, it's a lot more."

Overseas aid spending has escaped Coalition austerity cuts.
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Also, the money we give to India we have to borrow, so by the time we have repaid it, it's a lot more
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Conservative MP Philip Davies

Ministers are committed to increasing it to 0.7 per cent of national output, up from £7.8billion this year to £11.5billion by 2015, to reach targets set by the United Nations.

India's new Cruise missile-carrying frigate, INS Teg, is the first of three Talwar class warships ordered from the Yantar shipyard in Russia.

The International Development Department insists: "As we have made clear many times, British aid is not used to fund India's defence programme."

But Joseph Hosier, a retired merchant seaman who revealed the purchase of the warships, said: "We haven't got a merchant navy to speak of and, with what's happened to the Royal Navy too, it's disgusting.

"I'd like to know, if we're so friendly with India, whether we were offered the contract for these ships, and if not, why not?"

Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Just a couple of weeks after learning how they are effect-ively subsidising India's mission to Mars, British taxpayers will be dismayed to discover that the Indian government is splashing the cash on these new warships.

"India can afford to spend billions on ventures and equipment that the British Government goes without. This only goes to emphasise the absurdity of British aid going to India."

Yorkshire MEP Godfrey Bloom, UK Independence Party defence spokesman, said: "India now has a far superior navy to ours – new frigates, aircraft carriers with aircraft. And what do we have?"

Despite India's booming economy, millions of its citizens still live in poverty.

And yet India is said to be the world's largest importer of arms.

Last year it also came seventh in a world league table of military spending after the US, China, Russia, the UK, France and Japan.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute put India joint fourth with Britain in terms of spending as a percentage of GDP, at 2.6 per cent. India spent £30.9billion against the UK's £39.6billion.

India's military expansion has been driven by rivalries with neighbours Pakistan and China.

In January it chose French company Dassault for a £13billion order for 126 fighter aircraft instead of buying Eurofighter Typhoons offered by a consortium in which BAE Systems has a 33 per cent stake.

Britain has been without an aircraft carrier strike force since Sea Harriers were axed in 2010.
 

Bangalorean

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What a freaking irritating country Britain has become!! :puke:

Always the same whining, moaning and chest-beating. Their entire nation is turning into a bunch of mathematically challenged blithering idiots.
 

Oracle

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It makes my day seeing a developed Country crying about a pittance 280 million pounds. More to come.
 

sayareakd

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stupid brits missed the best part where we used their money to make A5, nukes and ATV, now those weapons will target them.
 

warriorextreme

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since when did britain become a cry baby nation??....oh wait since always???
 

Singh

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In lieu Tata has invested billions of GBP in the UK. You don't see us crying over it ?
 

ani82v

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An old article I found. Not sure if posted before.

India tells Britain: We don't want your aid - Telegraph
04 Feb 2012

Pranab Mukherjee and other Indian ministers tried to terminate Britain's aid to their booming country last year - but relented after the British begged them to keep taking the money, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Last week India rejected the British-built Typhoon jet as preferred candidate for a £6.3 billion warplane deal, despite the Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, saying that Britain's aid to Delhi was partly "about seeking to sell Typhoon."


Mr Mukherjee's remarks, previously unreported outside India, were made during question time in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament.

"We do not require the aid," he said, according to the official transcript of the session.

"It is a peanut in our total development exercises [expenditure]." He said the Indian government wanted to "voluntarily" give it up.

According to a leaked memo, the foreign minister, Nirumpama Rao, proposed "not to avail [of] any further DFID [British] assistance with effect from 1st April 2011," because of the "negative publicity of Indian poverty promoted by DFID".



But officials at DFID, Britain's Department for International Development, told the Indians that cancelling the programme would cause "grave political embarrassment" to Britain, according to sources in Delhi.

DFID has sent more than £1 billion of UK taxpayers' money to India in the last five years and is planning to spend a further £600 million on Indian aid by 2015.

"They said that British ministers had spent political capital justifying the aid to their electorate," one source told The Sunday Telegraph.

"They said it would be highly embarrassing if the Centre [the government of India] then pulled the plug."

Amid steep reductions in most British government spending, the NHS and aid have been the only two budgets protected from cuts.

Britain currently pays India around £280 million a year, six times the amount given by the second-largest bilateral donor, the United States. Almost three-quarters of all foreign bilateral aid going to India comes from Britain. France, chosen as favourite to land the warplane deal, gives around £19 million a year.

Controversial British projects have included giving the city of Bhopal £118,000 to help fit its municipal buses and dustcarts with GPS satellite tracking systems. Bhopal's buses got satellite tracking before most of Britain's did.


Why there is need of GPS tracking? And that for buses in Bhopal!!!!

In India, meanwhile, government audit reports found £70 million had disappeared from one DFID-funded project alone.

Around £44,000 of British aid was allegedly siphoned off by one project official to finance a movie directed by her son. :taunt:

Most aid donors to India have wound down their programmes as it has become officially a "middle-income country," according to the World Bank.

However, Britain has reallocated its aid spending to focus on India at the expense of some far poorer countries, including the African state of Burundi, which is having its British bilateral aid stopped altogether from next year.

The decision comes even though India has a £6 billion space programme, nuclear weapons and has started a substantial foreign aid programme of its own. It now gives out only slightly less in bilateral aid to other countries than it receives from Western donors.

Supporters of British aid say that India still contains about a third of the world's poor, with 450 million people living on less than 80p a day. DFID says its programmes — which are now focused on the country's three poorest states - save at least 17,000 lives a year and have lifted 2.3 million people out of poverty since 2005.

The junior development minister, Alan Duncan, said last week that cutting off British aid to India "would mean that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, will die who otherwise could live."

However, Mr Mukherjee told the parliament last August that foreign aid from all sources amounted to only 0.4 per cent of India's gross domestic product. From its own resources, the Indian government has more than doubled spending on health and education since 2003.

Last year, it announced a 17 per cent rise in spending on anti-poverty programmes. Though massive inequalities remain, India has achieved substantial reductions in poverty, from 60 per cent to 42 per cent of the population in the last thirty years.

Emma Boon, campaign director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "It is incredible that ministers have defended the aid we send to India, insisting it is vital, when now we learn that even the Indian government doesn't want it."

As long ago as 2005, MPs on the international development select committee found that India "seems to have become increasingly tired of being cast in the role of aid recipient." In their most recent report on the programme, last year, they said that British aid to the country should "change fundamentally," with different sources of funding. The report praised a number of DFID projects, but questioned others.

As well as the Indian government, many other Indians are sceptical about British aid. Malini Mehra, director of an Indian anti-poverty pressure group, the Centre for Social Markets, said aid was "entirely irrelevant" to the country's real problems, which she said were the selfishness of India's rich and the unresponsiveness of its institutions.

"DFID are not able to translate the investments they make on the ground into actual changes in the kind of structures that hold back progress," Ms Mehra said.

"Unless we arouse that level of indignation and intolerance of the situation, aid will make no difference whatsoever."

Mr Mitchell last night defended British aid, saying: "Our completely revamped programme is in India's and Britain's national interest and is a small part of a much wider relationship between our two countries.

"We are changing our approach in India. We will target aid at three of India's poorest states, rather than central Government.

"We will invest more in the private sector, with our programme having some of the characteristics of a sovereign wealth fund. We will not be in India forever, but now is not the time to quit."

DFID declined to comment on why it had asked the Indian government to continue with a programme it wanted to end.
 

Jim Street

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Id they are doing it for humanitarian purpose, why not take moral high ground and return back our wealth that the stole or rather pay the interest on that wealth.

Another thing is GoI should take the list of NGOs and other social service groups from GoB whom they support and ask GoB to stop their aid and start paying all by ourselves. This will negate their argument of Space program, nuclear weapons and new defense acquisitions.

India is also provides thousands of jobs in UK and other countries. The EADS has significant stakes in Dassault so if we buy Rafale, they will make profits too,
I think hey are being greedy or want the jobs that will be created for atleast a decade in their country rather than France.

As for giving aid to Afghanistan and other countries, India is doing it for strategic purposes, to strengthen the relations, creating positive image among people of those nations not to forget the rich resources in these countries.

Why newspaper of such reputation is giving very lame excuse coz if they don't understand the purpose behind our investment, they should rather post this at all making them loo like a fool ?
 

niharjhatn

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Id they are doing it for humanitarian purpose, why not take moral high ground and return back our wealth that the stole or rather pay the interest on that wealth.
That will never happen.

If the brits want to contribute REAL development to the poor, the last thing they should freaking do is give liquid money to politicians... especially OUR politicians who siphon off cream from every aid payment.

I honestly think the reason they persist in such payments is so that our politicians shut up and don't seek any REAL reparations... a la what the Jews have sought, what the allies sought from germany etc.

Far smarter for them to contribute infrastructure/materials/imparting farming techniques to the poor to directly improve their conditions.
 

Jim Street

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That will never happen.

If the brits want to contribute REAL development to the poor, the last thing they should freaking do is give liquid money to politicians... especially OUR politicians who siphon off cream from every aid payment.

I honestly think the reason they persist in such payments is so that our politicians shut up and don't seek any REAL reparations... a la what the Jews have sought, what the allies sought from germany etc.

Far smarter for them to contribute infrastructure/materials/imparting farming techniques to the poor to directly improve their conditions.
I know...wanted add that its not at all possible.
 

trackwhack

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I hope there is at least one such article in the UK newspapers every month to remind them of their true aukat. - cant afford a military or a space or nuclear program without stolen wealth. :lol:
 

Dovah

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We bought a 12 billion dollars worth planes, invested a few billion dollars on the space programme and a few hundred million dollar worth of frigates all from 280 mil. British pounds that the Brits send us as aid. Either we are too good at bargaining or the Britishers fail at Maths.
 

asianobserve

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It makes my day seeing a developed Country crying about a pittance 280 million pounds. More to come.

But why not reject that aid? It seems to me that India is already perfectly capable of taking care of its people. I don't understand here why some of you bash UK while you're accepting its aid...If some think that UK is liable to return some stolen wealth to India then I think accepting some pittance of "aids" is not the way to do it. It makes India sound like a beggar nation.
 
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