International aid should be abolished

The Comprehensive Spending Review was a step in the right direction, but I agree with Philip Booth and others when they say that there should be far more cuts down the line. But the biggest mistake was the announcement that the Department for International Development’s (DfID) budget will be increased by 37 percent by 2015.

It undermines the narrative that the country will be suffering the cuts together and shows a tone-deafness in cutting spending at home while increasing it abroad. But worse, it exacerbates the problem that development aid does an immense amount of harm to the developing world, and this spending increase will only make things worse.

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Nigel Jones

So long, Marianne Faithfull

Over 95 percent of the money that the government gives in aid is goes to the governments of developing countries rather than to charities like Oxfam and the Red Cross.