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| Cameron's slum dogma | Kevin Watkins The Conservative plan for overseas aid treats Africa as a laboratory for free-market ideologyYou don't win general elections in Britain by fighting poverty in poor countries. That has to be good news for David Cameron, because the Conservative programme on international development would be a sure-fire vote loser.Whatever your take on New Labour, its credentials on development are impressive. As a nation we have become more generous in our dealings with the world's poorest people, moving from the lower leagues to the premier division of leadership on poverty reduction.Aid has been an important part of the transition. The £9bn development assistance programme represents 0.5% of our GDP – three times the share in 1997. Britain has spearheaded global financing initiatives on HIV/Aids, malaria and child immunisation. And Gordon Brown was a key player in reducing Africa's debt burden. You can see the benefits in a country like Tanzania, where debt relief helped to finance the removal of school fees and put another 3 million kids in classes.It's a tough act to follow. But that's no excuse for what the Conservatives offer. Take the aid budget. The government has pledged not just to avoid cuts but to maintain pre-crisis spending commitments. It is now committed to making the UN target of spending 0.7% of GDP on aid a legally binding commitment. No other donor has gone this far. Cameron's response has been a study in evasion.He says that aid will be protected and that he backs the 2013 goal. But he has refused to endorse a legally binding target. And he has not ruled out financing climate change commitments from the aid budget – a move that would mean real cuts.With the Conservatives committed to early and deep cuts in the budget, deficit aid spending is bound to come under the spotlight. This is a soft target, partly because there is no constituency for aid on the Tory backbenches. In a recent poll of prospective Conservative candidates, 90% saw no reason to make the protection of the aid budget a priority. As George Osborne looks to trim public spending while financing an inheritance tax handout, it's unlikely he will go to the wall to defend the aid budget.Aid spending is not the only problem. The green paper One World Conservativism makes it clear that the Conservatives will use aid to roll back the state in key services. "We bring a natural scepticism about government schemes," as page 1 puts it. Public education systems in poor countries are failing the poor, so the argument runs. The solution: more private schools in slums, with governments using vouchers, bursaries and the public budget to support the development of non-state providers.Sounds familiar? This is an agenda for exporting to poor countries Michael Gove's "Swedish model" plan for schools in Britain. It is based on the same reductionist idea that education problems rooted in poverty, extreme inequality and social disadvantage can be tackled by expanding parental choice and shifting resources from public provision to private suppliers.There is plenty wrong with public education in poor countries. That is why so many desperately poor parents resort to poor-quality private providers. But if the public education system is broken, then the challenge is to fix it, not to bypass it. Transplanting reforms from a country like Sweden, with its high-performing schools and low levels of inequality, into Britain is questionable. Applying them to slums in Lagos or Nairobi is positively silly.Over the past decade aid has played a key role in strengthening public education across Africa. It has helped put over 10 million children in school. Progress on quality has been less encouraging, partly because of chronic under-financing and an annual deficit of 1.2 million teachers. Britain should be leading global efforts to tackle these problems, not treating the region as a laboratory for market-based ideology.To be fair, the Conservatives have come up with some strikingly original ideas. My personal favourite is the MyAid fund, a proposal to allocate multimillion-pound financing across 10 projects according to a national online vote. So if 20% of the population vote for, say, immunisation in Malawi, that's where 20% of the money will go. The fact that the voting public may not know much about health services in Malawi is clearly not an issue.Perhaps the Conservative party could hire the X Factor judges to champion the different causes and guide our choice. Better still, why not ask them to write the development manifesto?DevelopmentInternational aid and developmentDavid CameronConservativesPovertyKevin Watkinsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Rescue after plunge from bridge A sea training instructor rescues a man who fell 150ft (45m) from the Britannia Bridge into the Menai Strait off Anglesey. news.bbc.co.uk |
Mother guilty of heroin overdose murder Frances Inglis found guilty of murder after injecting son Tom with lethal dose of heroin to end his 'living hell'A mother who injected her brain-damaged son with a lethal dose of heroin has been jailed for life after being found guilty of his murder today.Frances Inglis, 57, said she killed 22-year-old son, Tom, to end his "living hell" after he suffered severe head injuries when he fell out of a moving ambulance. She was sentenced to life with a minimum term of nine years.During her evidence, Inglis tearfully told jurors she had had "no choice" and had sought, with love, only to end his suffering. But a judge instructed them to put emotion aside, telling them no one had the right to take the law into their own hands.Inglis, of Dagenham, east London, was found guilty today of both murder and attempted murder.She first tried to end his life in September 2007 and was charged with trying to kill him and banned from visiting him in hospital. But she persevered, giving the hospital a false identity and succeeding in her plan in November 2008.During the trial, Inglis wept as she described her despair at the "horror, pain and tragedy" of her son's helpless condition. "For Tom to live that living hell – I couldn't leave my child like that," she told the Old Bailey.Doctors were considering applying to the high court to legally withdraw food and water from Tom. "I couldn't bear the thought of Tom dying of thirst or hunger. To me that would be so cruel: to die slowly like that would be horrible," she said.She admitted ending her son's life but said: "I did it with love in my heart, for Tom, so I don't see it as murder."Miranda Moore QC, prosecuting, said: "It would be a hard-hearted person who didn't have sympathy for her position. It is a tragic case. But it is not a defence to murder to end someone's life to put them out of their misery."The court heard that Inglis had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and had a history of depression.Sasha Wass QC, defending, said: "Clearly Mrs Inglis loved her son, she was devoted to her son." She had also spent much of her life in "altruistic employment" as a voluntary carer, Wass said."She was a woman who in her life, until the events of July 7 altered her life completely, showed great compassion for the vulnerable and the disabled."The jury reached their verdicts by a majority of 10 to two, after deliberating for more than six hours.Inglis sat quietly in the dock occasionally looking up and nodding barely perceptibly as the judge outlined the case."However we look at all this, this was a calculated and consistent course of criminal conduct," he said. She believed that her son would not recover following his accident in July 2007, and the judge accepted her view was "sincerely held"."This is a highly unusual and very sad case. What you did was to take upon yourself what you thought your son's wishes would have been, to relieve him from what you described as a living hell."But you cannot take the law into your own hands and you cannot take away life, however compelling you think the reason. You have to take responsibility for what you did."The judge told Inglis she must serve a minimum of nine years in jail, less the 423 days she has already spent in custody.Inglis's son Alex said outside court: "I want to say that all of the family and Tom's girlfriend support my mum 100%. All of those who loved and were close to Tom have never seen this as murder, but as a loving and courageous act."Crimeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Police hunt for hospital patient Two patients missing from a psychiatric hospital are being looked for by police who say the public should not approach them. news.bbc.co.uk |
Twin's pain as killer is jailed The twin sister of a woman murdered by her former partner says "half of me died with her" as the killer is jailed for 18 years. news.bbc.co.uk |