Every Idea has a Price
Jacques Chirac has called for the:
strengthening of global governance by reforming the UN and providing more support to the developing world. He said his government would introduce an international tax on airline tickets next year to provide permanent funding for the fight against Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. France would hold a ministerial meeting next February to discuss ways of implementing this idea, which has already been backed by Germany, Spain, Brazil, Chile and Algeria.
As usual the idea to help Africa relies on putting the cost of the project at the feet of the taxpayer, a solution that requires no real thought or realistic assessment of how the problems are caused in the first place. For France to be proposing an international tax on airline fees as a workable solution to create more aid for ‘developing’ countries is laughable. Why doesn’t Chirac dip into his own pockets to help increase aid? Or better still, rather than spending billions of Euros a year subsidising French farmers (far more than is spent by France on aid) - effectively killing any chance of developing countries having far trade in relation to foodstuffs - why doesn’t he use this money to develop fair trade?
Because of course, Chirac, and fellow European statesman, are far more interested in pointless grand gestures than actually addressing the real issues and causes of poverty. No doubt the project will eventually be shelved in favour of a series of free concerts, where obscenely rich artists can pretend they give a fuck for an hour - whilst plugging a new album for free - and politicians can pretend that they are in touch with the ‘people’.