Press office & press releases

The Department for International Development will tomorrow announce changes to the way aid money is spent. Aid for ‘fragile’ states will be a priority, as will maximum value for money and the UK's national interests. It will also cut aid to UN agencies that support agricultural development in favour of emergency relief programmes. The news has been met with criticism from anti-poverty campaigners, the World Development Movement who criticised the government for 'fighting terrorism, not poverty, with the aid budget'.

This year, the British public will be paying more for their Christmas turkey because of City speculators. Betting on commodity prices by hedge funds and investment banks has led to rapidly rising prices of animal feed [1], driving up the retail price of turkeys.

Paul Kelly, an award winning turkey farmer and breeder, warned that turkey prices this Christmas are going to be more expensive than last year and we will be paying up to £3 extra for our festive bird. He said:

New evidence that speculation on food by hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks is fuelling the rise of bread and other basic foods has been released by anti-poverty campaigners on World Food Day, October 16, 2010.

WDM condemns the link between public money and Cairn’s Arctic drilling. RBS underwrote loan to oil company one month before it acquired rig for arctic drilling.