Cash flow is a one-way street

THE FRIDAY THING: IT was King Canute who last tried to turn back the waters to prove that, as monarch, he was master of all he surveyed.

A flood of welly-wearing politicians have spent the last couple of weeks splashing through horrendous floods and proving that, like the ancient monarch, there was little or nothing they could do.

If we could build dams out of words and hot air, Somerset and the Thames Valley would have remained dry over the past couple of weeks.

Huge areas of the country were and still are in many cases, under feet of muddy water and goodness knows what else.

The cash flow, like the rivers, was all one way. So we could recall sending £8.35 million to Malaysia, Brazil and Turkey to make PE lessons more meaningful! And what about the £15 million we sent to Colombia to monitor flatulent cows and the £1billion we handed over to equip border guards in Belarus and (don’t laugh) to fund a water park in Morocco. Ironic or what?

And let us not forget the £9.8 million to finance an Ethiopian girl band. And the £8.62 billion money-bags Britain spent on overseas aid, £268 million spent by the Foreign Office and a trifling £107million to the United Nations and other global agencies.

And how much did we get back in aid to help to sort out our flood problems and the chaos it created for householders and businesses? How much do you think?