Keeping China Out: The Real Reason for Overseas Aid.

I've searched long and hard for the reasons behind ring-fencing and ultimately increasing the foreign aid budget when the country can't afford to run things at home.

Why would a country, almost bankrupt and borrowing money to keep services running, use a portion of that borrowed money for aid and give it away? It doesn't make sense, unless you look at the issue from the viewpoint of a company, rather than an individual.

As individuals, we hopefully try and spend less than we earn. Doing otherwise would end up with us owing money and paying interest and eventually a whole world of nastiness.

With a company, there are several different reasons to borrow money: you might invest in new equipment in order to be more productive, you might want to invest in a marketing campaign in order to boost sales.

In the case of foreign aid, I've come up with really only one compelling reason: we're acting like a company: borrowing money to spend on marketing against the competition. Its an attempt at stopping China from entering our spheres of influence.

China has huge cash reserves, which its using to buy influence and invest in resource supply around the world. The only reason we're spending money abroad when we can't afford to has to be keeping China from buying into those countries we see as allies. We're pumping billions into India, who in turn spend billions on a space program. It seems utter madness until you start to understand what a huge change would happen in the world if China and India became closer. There would be a paradigm power shift towards the East and the West would suffer greatly as a consequence.

The problem lies further in the future: can we afford to continue spending such huge sums? Obviously our domestic tax take can't sustain it, so are we just delaying the inevitable? Is it a short-term thing until the EU finally controls foreign policy and attains a critical mass strong enough to compete with the super-powers?

Finally, isn't this all a waste without the resources to defend our spheres of influence? Without a strong armed forces able to enforce our interests abroad (especially against the might of China for instance), aren't we just pissing in the wind?

A couple of nuclear powers and a rag-tag bunch of dis-unified armed forces aren't going to be able to stand up to unified forces from a better funded and more populous nation.

If this is the real reason for continuing foreign aid and the haste with which we're abandoning sovereignty to the EU, isn't it about time we were told the truth? Isn't it also time we sopped the huge waste in armed forces procurement.

"Talk softly and carry a big stick" has always been an apposite phrase when posturing about the world stage. Unfortunately we haven't enough of the right sort of sticks to back up the talk any more, thanks to the daylight robbery brought upon us by defence contractors and our piss poor procurement system.

Our government has yet to realise we are a spent force and it needs people of vision to chart a new future for this country.

I'm convinced the corrupt regime of the EU is not it.