CAP Money for Aids

Even when they are right, they are wrong. There is a campaign to redirect some of the money from CAP toward aid for Africa.

Over 100 MPs are backing a campaign to transfer billions of pounds from the European Common Agricultural Policy to people in the developing world.

I have to be happy that such a campaign against my most hated part of my least favourite organisation, but the logic is all twisted.

The Aids crisis is ''one of the most urgent moral challenges facing the world today,'' they write. ''That money could be most easily and fairly found by cutting the taxpayers' subsidies to Europe's richest farmers.''

Why only the rich farmers? What difference does it make how wealthy a farmer is as to whether he deserves a subsidy or not. Why should we keep the least productive farmers in business and punish the best. This is an anti Kulak policy, not an anti-subsidy issue. No-one is questioning the fundamental rationale of subsidies. Besides, the CAP is doing real damage to Africa, that a small sum of aid will do nothing to solve. Scrap the bloody thing and let Africa’s farmers sell us their produce.