UK DU-ers: Harriet Harman giving a talk on foreign aid at LSE

[Jeneral2885]

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2011/20110203t1830vHKT.aspx

[Hopeless Romantic]

1. form an orderly queue

[Jeneral2885]

2. :-)

are you pro or anti aid?

[Hopeless Romantic]

3. very much pro

[Jeneral2885]

4. nice

nice

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Not when it's spent on the Vatican:

MPs have asked ministers to explain why £1.85m ($3m) from the international development budget was spent on the Pope's UK visit in September.

They queried the "surprising" transfer from the Department for International Development (Dfid) to the Foreign Office and what it was spent on.

Dfid said the cash would not affect overseas aid spending as it was taken from its "running costs" budget.
...
The government "shouldn't be siphoning off Dfid funds to subsidise Foreign Office expenditure on state visits", said Harriet Harman, the party's deputy leader and international development spokeswoman.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12351583

She's right. If you take money out of the department's running costs, then it has to stop doing something else. Subsidizing religious celebrations in Britain is not the job of Dfid.

[Jeneral2885]

6. I can think of worst cases of misues during Labour's time

This is LCID's mud-sligning against the Tories. And this doesnt count as ODA in the final accounting anyway.

[Jeneral2885]

7. The transcript: Very disappointing

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/pdf/20110203%20Harriet%20Harman%20transcript.pdf

Harriet Harman's focus: just reaching 0.7% of GNI (and that's it???). No talk about aid effectiveness, ideas alongside aid (ending neoliberal ideas), developmental transformation, global development reform--eg IFIs, UN???? Pity.