Praise for Jolly Old England in finally getting one right…  Now let us follow their lead, DEFUND the UN and kick them out of the United States of America.  After all, according to them, we are morally bankrupt in our human rights record. *Spit* U.K. Pulls Plug on United Nations Spending, in Move That is Bound to Hearten U.S. Critics – (Fox News) Critics of U.S. spending on the United Nations got a huge boost—and supporters of that spending, especially the Obama Administration, took a body blow—from an unlikely source this week: the British government, long one of the U.N.’s staunchest supporters.
In a sweeping and hard-nosed reorganization of priorities for its $10.6 billion multilateral foreign aid program, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron has pulled the financial plug entirely on four U.N. agencies at the end of next year, put three others judged merely “adequate” on notice that they could face the same fate unless they improve their performance “as a matter of absolute urgency;” and issued pointed criticisms of almost all the rest.

The tough actions were revealed as the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee chairperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has been gearing up an extended critical look at U.N. funding as part of its overall budget austerity plan. The British revelations also came while U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice was on an extended cross-country tour, drumming up grass-roots support for U.N. funding in what is sure to be a protracted battle. Unveiling of the new British priorities undoubtedly will hearten her opponents on Capitol Hill.
Moreover, the British actions change the focus of the debate, from gauzy generalizations about the need for and importance of the U.N. to a realistic look at what it actually achieves.
The basis of that switch is the same urgent necessity hanging over almost every Western government: austerity. For Britain’s coalition government, however, the need to make dramatic domestic buts has been coupled with a promise to avoid cuts, and even make budget increases, in the money it sends to help the world’s poorest people—part of the price of bringing the minority Liberal-Democrats into the coalition.
But the outcome could be an international game-changer: to defend its relatively liberal position on global anti-poverty aid, the government is switching from publicly supporting institutions to publicly awarding and penalizing them on the basis of their results—an attitude that is likely to send a continuing shock wave through the sprawling, bureaucratic U.N. system. (read more)