Africa: do we not have eyes that can see

Well, its been a little while now since the jamboree of the G8 has finished. Rarely has such a lot of time and money been spent on such ridiculous subjects.

Firstly we have Africa. Against all logic and evidence the West has once again determined that the solution to Africa's problems lie in throwing money at the continent. Good lord. Have we no eyes? Can we not see? If aid was the answer, would Africa not now be a superpower? Lets look at China and Nigeria. Similar economic performance in the 1970's. Since then Nigeria's wealth per capita has halved at the same time as having found huge oil wealth and receiving no less than 20% of its money from aid. China meanwhile, languished until the economic liberalisation of the 1990's. It has now an economy seven times the size in the 70's and has removed 400m people from below the poverty line. Oh, and what aid did the West send to China?

There is a lot of economic and anecdotal evidence that aid hurts. I am not talking about one-off famine relief in response to a single event. I am talking about the constant flow of western money into the hands of governments and NGO's. Take education in the poorest communities. Private schools spring up in the slums of Nigeria. Local desparately poor people scrape and save to send their offspring to get an education that by all accounts is of the highest calibre given the resource available and run by dedicated staff. Along comes the Government to set up "free schools" using Western aid. Gordon Brown visited a new one on one of his recent jaunts. Set up in a blaze of publicity, teachers are hired based on government contacts. Many teachers are not actually teachers at all - many are seen falling asleep in class. Local government ministers arrive and complain about the private schools - commenting that ignorant parents think that schools are better when you pay. An interesting comment as the minister stands beside her Mercedes. Private schools begin to fail through a fall in school attendance as the very poor are not unreasonably tempted to the "free" alternative. Although amazingly a few private schools do survive.

So, here we have a tiny example of local African business squashed in favour of Government owned aid-backed initiatives where we now create a huge inter-dependence between the political class and western aid donors. And so it goes on. Africans have been taught that the route to success is not through wealth creation but through a sophisticated aid lobby. In fact, who would want to build a agricultural business when food is dumped on the market "free". Who would want to build a retail business when local corruption is endemic and the government can come and take it away at will.

Until we stop treating Africa and Africans as a Charity case and start getting angry with its corrupt leaders Africa will remain a bsaket case. We should stop giving aid except in the case of unforseen one-off disasters. We should prevent our countries supporting the tiny elite of wealthy leaders and their families and hangers-on. We should agressively support good governance and the small number of brave democratic governments who currently observe that if you fail your people, you get more aid and the leaders get rich. And when in doubt, we should leave things alone. As Reagon once said "the most terrifyingwords in the English language are 'I'm from the Government and I'm here to help'".

Labour deception on immigration

Setting aside the rights and wrongs of immigration, what is clear is that there remains a deliberate policy by Labour to preside over a massive increase in immigration on the one hand while deceiving the people of Britain on the other.

The deception takes the form of official pronouncements that the scale of immigration is not abnormal and denouncing those who say it is as scaremongerors. It also tries to present the immigration that takes place as beneficial to the nation.

Over the past few weeks two more pieces of evidence have come to light to demonstrate this fact. Firstly you may not recall but the Home Office under the direction of its political masters tried to suggest that the entry of Eastern European countries into the EU would make only a minor impact on our net entry figures. When early concerns about long lines of "Polish plumbers" did not materialise the Governments PR machine sprang into action and claimed its estimates of no more than ten to twenty thousand were proven correct. Of course, some year on the actual figures are sneaked out. Nearly 200,000 are now expected each year for the foreseeable future. So we are some 15x more than forecast - we can either believe that the Home Office is utterly incompetent or we can believe something else. I believe it was deliberate. The Government knew exactly what it was doing when it tried to make this a non-issue before the last election. Deliberate deception by the Government on this matter is endemic and a disgrace.

The second line of attack by Labour is that mass immigration is beneficial.

Today we get detailed analysis by Cambridge University which concludes that "the economic consequences of large-scale immigration are mostly trivial, negative or transient; that the interests of vulnerable sections of the domestic population may be damaged and any small fiscal benefits are unlikely to bear comparison with immigrations substantial demographic and environmental impact". Pretty clear.

There are also some fairly uncomfortable numbers in here for those who think immigration is good for the country. It is quite clear that immigration is not homogeneous - 90% of New Zealanders and Australians are in a job while 80% of those born in Canada and the Phillipines are in work. This compares with 12% of Somalis, 30% of Angolans and 42% of the huge Bangladeshi population. The report concludes that "some immigration is very beneficial but this benefit is cancelled by the influx of low-skill migrants". As a total proportion immigrants are 50% more likely to be inactive or unemployed. Immigration may increase total GDP (and economic growth) but it does so while REDUCING the most important indicator - GDP PER HEAD.

When "The Business" Sunday paper is able to point out that average disposable income in the UK is BELOW that of Louisiana and that (prior to the Hurricane) New Orleans would have been the richest city in the UK - this is what they are talking about. The reason is that per head we are not wealthy enough. And that perhaps the biggest threat to our wealth today is the gradual climb in taxes to sustain a growing welfare state. A welfare state that is looking after a growing number of poor and unskilled.

And finally to yet again hammer the Labour myth that our current immigration is somehow the same as always, the number born and settled in the UK has DOUBLED in the last 10 years. The proportion of people born in the UK has risen from 5.75% to 7.53% with London's population now comprising 25% foreign born. And that is part of the problem - immigrants do not come here to go and live in the Shetlands. They come here to live in the South East. We are not America with ample land. The South East is now the 2nd most densely populated area in Europe (after Holland) and will soon be the the most dense. You don't have to live here to see the effect on the local infrastructure.

We need to be clear. A deliberate policy of the British Government is in action. It implies a substantial increase in our population, mostly in London and the Home Counties. It implies a level of immigration that cannot be absorbed by the host nation in a way that avoids the worst aspects of "multi-culturalism". And it is put into effect through a policy of deceipt, spin and lies.