How India squanders British aid: The UK gives £1.4bn to a country that has its own space programme.At the Rolls-Royce showroom, behind imposing iron gates off dusty Ashoka Road, the chief salesman is pleased with his latest sale of a £600,000 Phantom to a billionaire Delhi businessman.
Thirty-five Phantoms, the biggest & most expensive Rolls-Royce, have been bought in India already in 2011. By the end of the year, another x35 will be sold to Indian tycoons & Bollywood film stars.
‘There’s always someone here with enough cash to buy a Rolls-Royce, even though the import tax doubles the price,’ the sharp-suited salesman says with pride.
Ferrari, Aston Martin & Land Rover have each opened up showrooms here. On sale too is the king of supercars, the Bugatti Veyron, with an eye-watering price tag of almost £1.5 million.
The country is racing up the league of rich nations. Indeed, its soaring economy will outstrip the UK’s by 2022. According to financial advisers Merrill Lynch, India has 153,000 dollar-millionaires — a 20 per cent rise in a year, compared with Britain’s own paltry increase of less than 1 per cent.
Indians have squirrelled away more money in Swiss bank accounts (a total of £900 billion since independence from Britain in 1947) than the rest of the world combined.
When Indians were invited recently by the Indian Government to exchange for paper money the gold bars & jewellery stashed in their homes (so pumping cash into the national economy), a horde of £160 billion was offered up.
Perhaps the perfect example of the garish spending of India’s newly-rich is the £2 billion, 27-storey skyscraper in Mumbai built by a local industrialist as a home for his wife & three children. It is the most expensive house anywhere in the world.
No wonder that in broke Britain questions are at last being asked about why we are handing billions to India in aid. A new report from an independent watchdog says that the rapid expansion of the UK’s aid programme has left taxpayers’ money at risk from corruption & fraud overseas.
During recent enquiries in India, it was discovered that much of the money is frittered away or stolen. LOL
This is priceless, keep it coming. Why did I leave the UK again??
Nope, wait a minute it's on the tip of my tongue
