How DARE you try and stop kids from dying Mr Cameron!

[Josquius]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002898/David-Cameron-pledges-814m-vaccinating-worlds-poorest-children.html

Cameron pledges ANOTHER £814m towards vaccinating the world's poorest children (on top of £2bn we are already going to donate)

Britain's ballooning overseas aid budget was under fresh scrutiny last night as it emerged the UK will donate five times more than the U.S. to a multi-billion-pound international initiative.

David Cameron yesterday pledged a further £814million of taxpayers' money to a child vaccine programme run by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, taking the country's total contribution to £1.5billion.

And the Prime Minister lashed out at Tory critics who warned the generous aid spending was making Britain a 'soft touch' in the eyes of the world.

Mr Cameron said: 'There is a strong moral case for keeping our promises to the world's poorest and helping them even when we face challenges at home.'

He told a conference in London that people should be 'proud' of the Coalition's pledge to increase aid spending by 34 per cent to more than £12billion.

The donation to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation will come from the existing budget of the Department for International Development, which has been ring-fenced despite the pressure on the economy and cutbacks elsewhere.

The pledge – praised by Mr Gates as 'human generosity at its finest' – makes Britain by far the largest donor.

As well as being more than five times the £274million pledged by the U.S., it is more than 30 times higher than Germany's £44million and almost 50 times the £30million given by Spain. Japan gave just £5.5million, while China gave nothing.

Raj Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said America could not afford to give more because it was facing a 'very difficult budget environment'.

n total the fund received £365million more than it had asked for and organisers admitted they did not know how the extra cash would be spent.

Delegates at the aid conference – held in the incongruous surroundings of a five-star London hotel – gave Mr Cameron an ovation for his pledge.

He said the new money would pay to vaccinate more than 80 million children against diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea, helping to save 1.4 million lives.

The Prime Minister acknowledged that increasing aid spending was 'controversial' at a time of cutbacks at home. And he said people were 'right to be angry when aid is badly spent'. But he insisted the answer was to improve the way money is spent – not to cut it.

His comments provoked criticism at home.

Tory MP Peter Bone said that while few would argue with vaccinating children, it was unclear why Britain was giving such a disproportionate amount.

'I am sure taxpayers in Germany will be delighted that we are leading the way. I'm afraid we are becoming a soft touch,' he said.

'People find it very hard to understand why we are doing this when libraries are closing, lollipop ladies are being sacked, potholes need repairing and people are finding life tough.'

Fellow Tory Philip Davies said Mr Cameron had 'got it wrong' by putting foreign aid ahead of domestic priorities.

'The Prime Minister says there is a strong moral case to keep our promises on overseas aid,' he said.

'But there is also a strong case for keeping our promises at home – such as sending more criminals to prison. If we haven't got money for one then we haven't got it for the other.'

Justin Forsyth, of charity Save the Children, said Mr Cameron deserved 'enormous credit', adding: 'I don't think we should underestimate the huge support among the British public for vaccinating children.'

The Daily Mail really does become a self-parody sometimes. Cameron decides to do something very good indeed and they're moaning.

[Barrister]

Wait.

Hold on.

Did I just see Tyr say something nice about a Tory?   

[Josquius]

Wait.

Hold on.

Did I just see Tyr say something nice about a Tory?  

He's appealing to the Lib Dem vote and doing something Progressive. So on this issue he gets a thumbs up. He's still well in negative numbers but meh.

[Razgovory]

That's a lot of money...

[Neil]

Wasting that kind of money on Third World children that are just going to get turned into child soldiers anyways is sort of a big deal.  Especially when it's entirely disproportionate to what the rest of the civilized world is doing.

[Slargos]

Artificially increasing the survivability of third world children only serves to further expand the size of the inevitable malthusian implosion.

Propping up a failing system by wasting labour on it is madness. You're throwing good money after terrible money.

The irony, of course, is that the very same people who are now beating down the gates of Europe, and slowly destroying our civilization are the very same people who live because of European medical and agricultural technology. We have become our own worst enemy.

[Josquius]

If the chance of your kid dying before the age of 10 drops from 50% to 5% then you won't need to have so many kids to make sure one of them survives.

[Neil]

If the chance of your kid dying before the age of 10 drops from 50% to 5% then you won't need to have so many kids to make sure one of them survives.

I doubt that survival rate accounts for the birth rate of the Third World types.

[citizen k]

If the chance of your kid dying before the age of 10 drops from 50% to 5% then you won't need to have so many kids to make sure one of them survives.

I doubt that survival rate accounts for the birth rate of the Third World types.

Fucking is all there is to do in the third world.

[Ed Anger]

That and chopping up your neighbors.