What the islands need is liquidity and resources now. So let’s provide both. But let’s not worry about digging into the aid budget. Just as £1bn could mysteriously be found for Northern Ireland when needed so too can the money for these islands be found now. But better still, we don’t even need to find a budget to take the money from. Just lend it instead. Nothing could be easier to do: after all government can create money at will for that purpose just as banks can.
Charge interest on this loan by all means,
Wouldn’t do to actually just give something to impoverished people, would it?
We could easily give a couple of billion. It’s just a question of printing it, after all. And since it will all be spent miles away, it won’t cause inflation.
Or something.
(c) Prof Murphy.
Is there a vacant Professorship of Asinity somewhere to which seat the good Richard Murphy could be appointed with a ceremony of appropriate pomp and circumstance befitting his suitability for it?
We could extend them a loan at the same low interest rates that we enjoy; assuming that the UK gilts have a lower interest rate than BVI ones. Whether it would be gratefully received is another matter entirely.
Ironic that this type of aid (if it was allowed to be used) could actually provide some real demonstrable returns on investment for a change. If used to fix buggered up roads, and infrastructure in an isolated unit such as a small island hit by a massive hurricane.
He has said worst things (ok that’s not saying much).. lend them lots of money, that presumably makes the country be classed as being poorer and then we can give them the money out of the aid budget to repay the loan…
So we literally give away billions in the aid budget so India can have a space program or African dictators can buy Daimlers for their wives, but we have to lend money at interest to a stricken British dependency coz some cunt in Cambridgeshire doesn’t like them.
@Rob, that does seem to be the way said orifice wants to run things, yes. Luckily for all, he’s unlikely to ever gain a sniff of power.
“@Julia
…he’s unlikely to ever gain a sniff of power”
I wish I could be certain of that.
He says whatever those who pay him want him to say and the left are quite happy to use anyone, albeit they discard and disown them as soon as their usefulness is gone.
It might be short-lived but even a short time with him having influence that mattered would be nauseating and economically disasterous
It’s a bit odd that the Sontaran hasn’t advocated raising the tax rates on the affected islands. Isn’t MOAR tax always the answer to every problem?
The magnificent JuliaM
He likes to quote Gandhi – but I would always cite the example of people laughing at Hitler in the 1920s. how many of those people were laughing 15 years later?
Evil is eternal and the combination of evil and stupidity an alluring one for many of the products of state educations who cannot even reason out first order consequences let alone anything beyond. Jez Corbin is on course to be PM FFS….
I think giving aid the the hurricane victims is a good idea.
Diogenes said:
“It’s a bit odd that the Sontaran hasn’t advocated raising the tax rates on the affected islands”
That’s stage 2. First he wants the UK government to lend them money, then he’ll say they have to impose taxes in order to pay the loan back.