Letter: Foreign 'lunacy'

IT HAS been reported that the Department For International Development is to extend its "ring fencing" of foreign aid performance, while we Britons sink under our burden of national debt.

To polish up the Millennial Development Goals set up in 2001, "innovation grants" totalling 40 million will this year be added to our present outlays in foreign aid "to reduce poverty in other countries". Deputy Prime Minister. Nick Clegg has let it be known that he will steer the DFID in the direction of assisting more girls in third world countries into education and in "developing new projects on property rights".

The unkindest cut of all, however, in these preposterous announcements comes with Mr Clegg's promise "for the DFID to revise strategies for more integrated post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan and Pakistan".

This is Alice in Wonderland stuff: first we engage in a war that we should never have entered upon at the cost now of billions per annum, then we prepare to organise similar disbursements to repair the damage we have caused.

They used to call the Tories "The Stupid Party"; clearly Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats now merit the title "The Lunatic Party".

ALASTAIR HARPER

House of Gask

Lathalmond

by Dunfermline