Development of What?

Of HIV and thence of AIDS, it seems.

Those of us with connections to Saint Helena (incidentally, and despite her very close ties to Cape Town, one of the extremely few jurisdictions on earth where no case of HIV infection has ever occurred) have more than enough reason to think little of the Department for International Development, which, before anyone starts, is run by the Tories, not by the Lib Dems.

And now, it is going to waste £2.95 million on sending 45 million condoms to be distributed free in Uganda, a land of 33.3 million people, and where a generation's worth of campaigning for abstinence outside marriage and fidelity within it has led to an HIV infection rate below seven per cent.

DFID itself claims to support ABC – abstinence, be faithful, use a condom. But, like everyone else who makes that claim, its projects seldom or never mention either A or B. It is assumed that the black, the poor, and above all the black poor are incapable of abstinence or fidelity, and that in any case there is some sort of human right to be sexually promiscuous. It is also widely held that promiscuity, especially among men, is integral to African culture, making it somehow racist to criticise it.

In reality, of course, it is precisely that position which is racist. As the Ugandan Government has actively and very successfully understood for 20 years. DFID is about to clod-hop in and ruin that superb work, with unspeakably calamitous consequences.

As with the advertisement of abortion on television, welcome back to Thatcher's Britain, the country that, among so much else, legalised abortion up to birth.