Ahead of a visit to Kenya, International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said the money would be used in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.
This is most welcome but ,,,
.In the opening days of the assault on Libya, the United States and the United Kingdom launched a barrage of at least 161 Tomahawk cruise missiles to flatten Moammar Gadhafi’s air defenses and pave the way for coalition aircraft.
.Each missile cost about £875,046
Britain's involvement in the Libya conflict will cost the taxpayer as much as £1bn if it continues into the autumn as expected, according to expert analysis and data gathered by the Guardian.
So the £52.25m whilst better than most other Europeans is as nothing compared th what has been a relatively short conflict in which no ground troops are involved .
As Patrick Cockburn put it yesterday's Independent
The horrible Foreign Office cliché, used for decades by diplomats and politicians to justify Britain's military alliance with the US, claims that "it enables Britain to punch above her weight internationally". A moment's reflection on this dictum should lead to the conclusion that a boxer who persists in getting into the ring with bigger opponents is likely to end up in hospital.
Britain has become involved in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya over the past decade and none has gone well politically or militarily. The Iraq war divided Britain far more and for longer than almost any conflict, including the Suez crisis. The British Army spent years failing to get control of Basra and the area around it. For all this commitment, Britain never had much influence on US policy in Iraq or the rest of the Middle East.I would love to see a n Independent Wales punching above its weight. But I hope that this would be by be an example of providing aid to those who are suffering from man made or natural disasters not trying to convince itself or the rest of the World it was major gameplayer in World Politics by following the US blindly into conflicts which have dubious legitimacy..
Sadly even the much vaunted Live Aid in 1985 raised. only £150m for famine relief as a direct result of the concerts.
Don't get me wrong this was a tremendous achievement and the organisers deserve our praise and gratitude for raising our awareness and providing the Aid they did. But compared to the military expenditure of the UK even when we are at peace (and it's been along time since we were) this is peanuts.
If you launched an appeal for paying for another cruise missile to launch on dubious targets, in a war which we are there not to take sides but under the UN mandate to protect civilians in what was supposed to be an humanitarian intervention, to stop Gaddafi's tanks reaching Benghazi, which rapidly transmuted into an expanded war aim of overthrowing the Tripoli regime. How much from the general public would you raise?
