I have never really understood the concept of 'aid'.
The nearest I came was during the Live Aid stuff when it seemed all a bit dodgy. Rich folk gave money to poor folk to buy stuff from the rich folk. Seemed sort of OK, but somehow the poor folk seemed to still owe the money so ended up worse off.
So you can see my grasp of such things.
And I'm still grappling with it all.
Take today (link(s) to follow I'm sure).
Just watched a slot where our Dear Leader got away from the important issues of reporting on plane crashes (a classic bit of 24/7 media non-news scrabble where, after a few days, we have got no further than the startling notion that it hit the ground early by virtue of not flying any more) seemed to be saying that broke Britain is giving aid to the biggest and fastest growing economies in the world. Don't get it at all.
Now, somewhere in there is the worthy notion of our exporting (and getting paid for... but with our won money) 'expertise' in clean technology, but it all seemed a bit drop in the ocean and tenuous at best.
Meanwhile there are oodles of dirty great and just plain dirty coal fired stations still going up, and the 3 Gorges seems to be an eco disaster already.
I wonder what the Chinese for enviROI is?
