Charity really does begin at home

One of British prime minister Gordon Brown’s favourite do-good hobby horses is aid to Africa. It is one of the very few areas of the country’s debt-ridden finances that may not face the scythe in coming months and years.
Like motherhood, it is hard to criticise largesse that is aimed at those who are far worse off than ourselves. But then it all depends how you disperse that largesse.
Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) appears to be in the business of creating fake organisations - or for those who have been following my blogs on fake grassroots organisations - a kind of development aid AstroTurf.
One of these, “Connections for Development” CfD, is supposedly a forum for ethnic minorities to engage on issues relating to international development. According to a recent report by the NGO Policy Network entitled “Fake Aid”, DfID created CfD two years ago and is its only donor. An independent review has already questioned the purpose of CfD.
You may well ask what all this has to do with development and how does it help the poorest in Africa. You might also ask, what is the real purpose of such government- sponsored AstroTurf ?
Here’s a clue: In August several British newspapers carried a report from the Taxpayers Alliance that government spent some £37million in 2007-08 on think tanks, charities and political campaigning. In other words, as the Alliance put it, on 'government lobbying government'.
If AstroTurf organisations tell the government what they’d like development aid money to be spent on, then government can’t be doing the wrong thing, can they?
Hence the government can claim it is doing what “the people” want.
It’s a circular argument that puts a whole new meaning on the word ‘spin’.