And there's the rub. The people at the current meeting asking that reparations be discussed are politicians. If the money gets paid government to government, how much money can the general populous expect to see?Horse wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 5:36 pmThat timeline would obviously form part of any negotiations. It would be imbecilic to expect it all in a one-off BACS transferHoonercat wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 4:15 pmIt might take a while to pay off £18.8 trillionHorse wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 2:32 pm If the decision is, eventually, that reparations should be paid, couldn't it be paid annually from the international aid budget?
For example:
In 2022, Nigeria was the third largest recipient of UK bilateral country specific ODA, receiving £110 million.
Between 1998 and 2017, the UK committed £2.8 billion in bilateral aid to Ghana.
The UK 2023 ODA budget was £15.37 billion. Possibly 1,000 years might be considered unacceptable?
And, of course, reparations negotiations would include how and where the money was spent. I'd bet that most of it would never leave our shores, instead being used the buy UK goods and services.
If slave users developed what became substantial chunks of an areas economy eg tea, cane sugar, coffee plantations (rather than extractive industries that disappeared when the product was exhausted), how do you value that?
Where does it stop? Indigenous populations request the backdated GDP of, say Australia, USA as rent of their land? South America calculates the cost of being converted to Catholicism, smallpox etc and wants payback from the Conquistadors?
It's all a bit cloud cuckoo land.
