In this week’s Spectator | 4 August 2011

The Spectator this week contains a brilliant piece on the crisis in Somalia by our Kenyan columnist Aidan Hartley. The Daily Telegraph today reports that voters are extremely sceptical about Cameron’s aid policy, wary of shovelling cash overseas when we’re hard-up at home. Aidan’s piece proves the voters absolutely right (no surprise).

Not only would the cash be better spent in Britain, but according to Aidan, aid money in Somalia actually makes the situation there much, much worse. He says: 

‘I am haunted by the people I have seen die in Somalia, and by news pictures of the latest famine, but aid agencies are presenting this crisis misleadingly — as if it were an act of God in the Old Testament. In early July charities were blaming it on the ‘worst drought in 60 years’. They are still calling it the ‘worst drought ever’ when in recent days torrential rains have flooded refugee camps in Mogadishu.