Author Archives: John Madeley

The Independent View: Poverty can and must be made history

By John Madeley | Sun 7th March 2010 - 2:15 pm

Ten million people bought Make Poverty History campaign armbands in 2005. Some would hold that voters give development issues a low priority. But those armbands showed that a lot of voters care.

More and better aid, debt relief and trade justice were the demands of campaigners. Five years later, how is the government doing? Brilliantly if you fall for Labour’s spin. Mediocre if you analyse the facts.

An OECD report says that Britain is expected to devote 0.56% of national income to development aid this year. That hides a few things. The government arrives at this figure by including …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Paul Holmes
    Rob, you also say that we can't be the party of the NHS or the Environment because Labour and the Greens have those. Surely it is a mistake to abandon whole are...
  • Paul Holmes
    Rob, you offer two possible groups of key target supporters for the Liberal Democrats. However, both are, as you note, just subsets of the affluent middle class...
  • Peter Wrigley
    @Jana: I regrade myself as an extremest for liberalism: the maximum amount of individual freedom that doesn't infringe the freedom others. I’m also pretty ke...
  • Roland
    >”He’d voted in every general election since 1974, he said, and this was the first time he had ever voted for a winning candidate.” Well I could say t...
  • Peter Martin
    @ Jack, Starmer knew how to have good relations with the Trades Unions. Pity it didn't last. As soon as he was PM he was suspending his own MPs for doing wha...