Stick your money!

[vetran]

well spotted - indeed.

[CheeseSlice]

Hmmmm... you have to wonder why this story only just made it into the papers more than a year after the Indian quote.

UK media plays dated Pranab aid quote

A row on aid to India heated up on Sunday after diplomats said a statement frontpaged by a leading British newspaper, quoting finance minister Pranab Mukherjee as saying aid is “peanuts,” was in fact made in 2010.

“They seem to have got their chronology a bit mixed up,” a British diplomat in New Delhi said. The report in the Sunday Telegraph, headlined ‘India tells Britain: We don’t want your aid’, quoted Mukherjee as telling the Rajya Sabha: “We don’t require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development exercises.”

But Mukherjee’s statement was apparently about foreign in aid in general and underscored the fact that, in terms of flow, aid was small in comparison to trade and investment. The comments were published amid a demand by a small number of MPs to cancel British aid to India.
The row, mostly played out in the media, follows New Delhi’s decision to name the French Dassault as favourites in a competition to supply India with billions of dollars of fighter aircraft. Some MPs in Britain, which was part of the competing Eurofighter Typhoon bid, think that Typhoon should have been chosen.

Alan Duncan, international development minister, brought some clarity into the debate, telling a TV audience this week, “We do not link aid to trade… In due course we will come out of India because it is on an upward path and we should be very pleased that that’s the trajectory they’re on.” The Sunday Telegraph reported that it was British officials from the Department of International Development who last year “begged” India not to end aid, claiming such a move would cause “grave political embarrassment” to Britain.

[TimberWolf]

Why will it embarrass the UK movement if we don't pay the aid? Embarrassing enough to result in someone getting sent to jail perchance?

[MarillionFan]

I think the cold weather will have taken care of a few of them.

Fingers crossed. I've not seen EO post for a few days.

[MrMark]

"Sterling, you can't give it away"

(although there are still some of us willing to take it off your hands, if it's that much of a burden)

[vetran]

Perfect time to make both populations happy. Cancel the Aid, the vast majority gets stolen anyway.

Maybe that is why the civil service & relevant ministers don't want it cancelled they won't be able to send Tarquin / Ranjit to Public School without the money stolen from the UK electorate and the starving Indian poor. Or they are using it as leverage to interfere with India's decisions, not unusual for western governments to buy a seat at the table.

I'm sure the large multinationals pumping money into India will start questioning the behaviour of their government with regards to their poor eventually. Also so much money is repatriated by Indian nationals and their descendants I think the Indian poor will slowly be dragged out of their poverty because their cousins live abroad and send money home.

[bless 'em all]

I wonder when the UK is going to start looking after their elderly?

I think the cold weather will have taken care of a few of them.

[MarillionFan]

I wonder when India are going to start looking after their poor?

I wonder when the UK is going to start looking after their elderly?

[BrilloPad]

I wonder when India are going to start looking after their poor?

[scooterscot]

"Sterling, you can't give it away"

[Troll]

Said Bob.

India tells Britain: We don't want your aid - Telegraph

India’s Finance Minister has said that his country “does not require” British aid, describing it as “peanuts”.

But officials at DFID, Britain’s Department for International Development, told the Indians that cancelling the programme would cause “grave political embarrassment” to Britain,

Cancel it now!

[AtW]

He's got a point.

[DimPrawn]

Said Bob.

India tells Britain: We don't want your aid - Telegraph

India’s Finance Minister has said that his country “does not require” British aid, describing it as “peanuts”.