Sunday 6 September 2009

The Department for International Development (DfID) certainly Know How To Travel,

the Government department is in charge of eradicating global poverty, naturally Development Secretary Douglas Alexander (above) and his chums have to travel the world spreading the word of how to tackle poverty, but this meant spending £6million of taxpayers’ money on first-class and business-class travel in just one year, that in basic terms means that its 2,600 staff took an average of nine business-class flights every day for 12 months at an average cost of £1,664 per ticket, (I have not done the math I got that from the article), they also took 11 first-class flights over the same period costing £25,932, or £2,357 per ticket, meanwhile some DfID staff routinely used first-class rail travel, with 1,042 journeys being made last year at a cost of £162,756, it is at this point I have read the mantra of the department, ‘to promote sustainable development and eliminate world poverty’ and from it's annual report published in July ‘There are still more than a billion people living on less than $1 a day, 9million children die from preventable causes each year, and 70million children are denied the opportunity to go to school.’ the DfID spokesman refused to supply a detailed record of the business-class flights, He was also unable to state how many economy-priced flights were made during the period, prompting concerns that some staff may have abused the system by flying business-class on journeys that did not merit the expense, all I can say it seems more is spent on traveling than giving, but I still maintain that I can see no reason why of the £6billion budget £6million is spent on travel.

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