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Pay your tax or aid stops, MPs tell wealthy Pakistanis
Belligerence
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Is the headline and leading piece in tomorrow's Times.
British aid to Pakistan is set to double to about £450 million a year by 2015 and thus become the biggest recipient of UK overseas aid. :eek:
But tad ironic nothing is done about tax avoiders in our very doorstep.
British aid to Pakistan is set to double to about £450 million a year by 2015 and thus become the biggest recipient of UK overseas aid. :eek:
But tad ironic nothing is done about tax avoiders in our very doorstep.
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YOUR AID STOPS FOREVER
or this one
COMPANIES IN BRITAIN PAY FULL TAX
wonder which one will be first
they should give the Aid directly to Orgs like Save the Children and other groups and totally avoid the goverments because for all the money that gets sunk in very little seems to change.
So Pakistan should live under the threat from a nuclear India? iIdon't think so. Also OP, whats the headline about exactly?
I think the aid is very important but Pakistan needs to do more to help itself and they can start by getting a proper tax collection system going.
If they did that, I do think that within a generation that Pakistan would start to make the same kind of inroads on the world stage economically that India has in a proportionate way but being realistic not quite as big as what India has. Pakistan has a lot of potential I think in general and I wonder if there is untapped energy supplies within Pakistan. If there is, then that is what will also help them but they dfeinetely need to get a tax collection system going.
Aid should not be going anywhere connected with government or rich, it should be going to areas government cannot or will not reach. Slum sanitation. Non-secretarian education. An impartial press. Disease eradication. Land redistribution. Legal assistance for farmers dispossessed by corrupt officials.
Nations that are successful have low levels of corruption and high educational standards among other things. Deal with these and poverty is reduced.
How do you deal with corruption that is part of the cultural heritage? We have not dealt successfully with our own corruption yet, why on earth should we even consider interfering with the corruption in cultures to which we have no responsibility and virtually no power?
By not giving them the money to be corrupt with?
God knows where the aid will end up there.
Remarkable that this story has not gained more traction already,
Another take on it from the telegraph, appalling misuse of these funds :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9964792/British-aid-is-helping-fund-re-election-campaign-of-Bhutto-family-in-Pakistan.html
Given that such a huge sum out of our foreign aid budget is going to be spent in this way, have to wonder if we may have corruption of our own going on somewhere here.............
The difference between Pakistan and other places is that it happens to be right next door to Afghanistan (where was Osama found for example) and has plenty of radicalisation going on within its own borders.
Aid is therefore as much about stemming that (feeding/educating people makes them less angry/better informed and less likely to be radicalised) as it is about anything else.
As such aid to Pakistan should be seen as much about defence/foreign policy as it is about humanity.
And don't be surprised to see increasing aid to parts of Northern Africa for exactly the same reasons.
Aid = Bribes in many many cases. It would look odd having a "Bribe" part on our accounts, so it gets lumped in with aid.
Exactly - its just taxpayers money used to bribe foreign countries to use British companies and boost their private profits.
Its 440 Million in aid, not 40 Billion but with the way your coming across, people would be forgiven for thinking its the latter. Did you know that Britain made the equivelent of 4 BILLION A YEAR when it ruled India and what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh? I take it the East India Trading Company who where there before official British rule but where British colonialists pretty much made the same amount of money too.
sounds like here
For the first time ever in Pakistan, a democratically elected Government has completed its full term of power, thats a good thing. There is a long way to go and like I said before, they do need to help themselves much more by getting a proper tax collection system going but the aid is very important if democracy is to survive there and especially as NATO pulls out of Afghanistan by and large over the next year.
Its dissapointing the rich are not leading the way in Pakistan in getting a tax collection system started though. They should think about what it could and should achieve and go for it in getting it going.
I get ya, but at least most of the rich (I think) pay some tax and a fair bit still where the rich in Pakistan don't seem to fill in their tax returns that much at all. Did I hear right earlier that less than 1% generally do?! :eek:
Even if they started on really low rates of taxation with the poor being exempt, it would be better than nothing and would probably achieve a fair bit too.
I think I did hear that the Government there tried to bring in a VAT like tax but there was massive protests about it. Pakistani's can't have it both ways. They moan about the lack of electricity in their country and things like that but don't want to pay the taxes that should get them things like that?
In terms of exploitation the Mughal Empire before was significantly worse and it left very little positive legacy other than a history of enslavement. The figure you quote above is it seems about 0.3% of Indian GDP. If that is right is that exploitation on a grand scale or is it just efficient trading? Tata motors alone seem to have UK profits of about 0.02% of UK GDP. Are they exploiting or investing and trading?
I will not pretend that the British Empire was all love and compassion but let us not paint it purely as a profiteering colonial Empire providing no reciprocal benefits, that is propaganda and demonstrably untrue on many levels.
I find your stance unbelieveable. Here we have people moaning about 440 Million being given to Pakistan, probably over 3 years too and you seem to be saying that Britain taking 4 Billion a year out of India during British rule of India was ok because it only amounts to 0.3% of indian GDP now?! You'd be ok if we where invaded and had that amount of money or more being taken out of the country?
As for the Mughal empire, I've never studied it but whenever I've heard refrences to them before on news reports/documenteries, it seems to have left quite a mark on india generally in both culture and buildings, the Taj Mahal being one.