LETTERS BankAid
Sir: The Christian Aid advertisement on Third World debt carried in The Spectator ('Should 500,000 children every year have to die because of a bank loan?' . . . 15 September), is surreptitiously political and emotionally manipulative. Its authors, and the Charity Commission, might reflect in the following: (1) If the Third World wishes to attract aid or donations from richer countries, it should apply to governments and grant- giving trusts rather than borrowing com- mercially and waiting for Christian Aid to pretend that it is immoral for banks to expect repayment.
(2) The borrowers are not 'hungry peo- ple' or 'dying children'. They are those people's governments, which all too often have misused the loans or, worse, siphoned them off into their own pockets.
It is true that the borrowers cannot now repay. Consequently, Western banks may fairly be accused of foolishness, having lost vast sums of money, to the cost of share- holders, depositors or rescuing taxpayers.
But foolishness is not the same as wicked- ness, and Christian Aid does not assist the terrible plight of the Third World poor by playing dishonest anti-bank politics.
Rodney Leach
15 Clarendon Road, London W 11
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