Patriots are not to blame for malaria

Now that the furore surrounding Sport Relief appears to have died down - and it certainly extended beyond the actual weekend - I want to make clear where the blame lies for the existence of third world poverty.

In preparation for Sport Relief weekend, four impressionable young women were sent out from the United Kingdom to visit the west African country of Liberia.  There are a number of videos of their visit available to watch on the internet, and I link to just one of them below.

The most harrowing part of their time in Liberia was a visit to a hospital where three or four out of every ten children admitted with malaria will die.  We are told that across the whole of Africa one child dies every minute from malaria, and yet a mosquito net costs just five pounds.

Time for some number-crunching.  There are just over one billion people living in Africa.  Let us assume that exactly one billion mosquito nets are needed.  The total bill is five billion pounds.  If every man, woman, and child in Britain were to donate seventy-eight pounds to Sport Relief, then that would raise the necessary money.  Child mortality across Africa would fall drastically as a result.

An obvious problem is that many people in this country are struggling, and cannot afford to donate money to help children in Liberia.  The video below gives an idea of the level of poverty in Scotland, and probably gives a fairly accurate picture of the level of poverty across the whole of the United Kingdom.

Another important point to consider is that for many years now Britain has been giving billions to the third world in aid each year. Some of this represents money donated by ordinary people to charities working in poor countries, but a lot of it is money spent by the government - money we pay for in our tax bills.

The amount of money the British government is currently spending in aid each year is roughly twice the amount of money needed to provide the whole of Africa with all of the mosquito nets it requires - but how much of that money is spent on mosquito nets?

If Britain were to abolish overseas aid, then the billions of pounds saved could be spent on lifting the British people out of poverty through a combination of tax cuts and worthwhile spending.  The British people would then have far more money to spend on non-essentials, and it is perhaps inevitable that more money would be donated to third world charities.

Money donated to charities is money that is far more likely to be spent on useful things like mosquito nets than on useless things like enriching dictators.

People who vote Labour or Conservative or Liberal Democrat are to blame for the deaths of children in Africa.  Patriots are not to blame.

Update: this press report gives an example of how aid money is wasted.

Another update: this press report gives an example of what happens even when mosquito nets are supposed to be provided.

Related previous posts include:
Black violence: a black woman speaks out
The lawsuit of Mr O
How the ConDems waste your money