While the UK has been leading the way on rhetoric about development and poverty, it has also been leading the charge for linking aid to the damaging privatisation of public services, as well as supporting anti-development policies on a range of issues, from promoting arms exports to linking trade and investment, as well as supporting war in the Middle East.
Being taken seriously on international issues means being serious about the issues that make and keep people poor - starting, but not ending, with the cash.
Steve Tibbett
War on Want
I must wonder at the hoary economic ratio drawn between spending on aid versus spending on war and fighting terrorism to solve problems of development. I have never seen any convincing proof that aid prevents terrorism. I also have never seen proof that aid eradicates poverty. I have, however, witnessed a lot of fact that indicates that aid builds sustainable bureaucracies and consultant industries in developed counties both in our government and in enormous multi-national charities.
I wonder why more money is needed. I wonder, for example, if those who give their change in good faith realise that they are often donating to organisations that make a great deal implementing rehabilitation contracts connected to the work of the military. I wonder if taxpayers know the amount of DfID money that is spent on consultancies which do not produce any "evidence-based" result of poverty-reduction or conflict resolution at all, but in fact provide rationalisations for foreign and trade policy.
The whole aid sector needs to take responsibility for the fact that it has not yet shown an alternative to war or poverty aand to face what it has become. It is an industry. It is part of a system of crisis and rehabilitation. It should wonder deeply why its officials are now bombed and shot. Is it because they are perceived differently than they present themselves? We need is to address the question of actually solving problems and then to explain to the public truthfully how that is done.
Richard Rathwell
London
What evidence does Larry Elliott have that DfID has become a "branch of the Foreign Office"? DfID's culture is now more tolerant and you can have a dialogue with it in ways you could not before. The big aid agencies may not like DfID's direction, but it has got better at working with smaller organisations and groups that are not the traditional development constituency.
There is plenty wrong with DfID, including its enthusiasm for World Bank-led solutions to poverty, but Elliott has chosen the wrong targets for his attack.
Stirling Smith
Bolton, Lancs
