Over at Our Word is Our Weapon, Jim from North London writes a well-informed and interesting blog about current issues in international development, as well as various other issues of social policy. This week, Jim has rightly taken Tim Worstall to task for claiming that aid does not work. As usual, Jim is spot on – and his critique is witty, crisp and accurate. It is precisely because there is so much widespread scepticism about aid, and that it is so rarely challenged with the kind of authority that Jim has brought to the task, that I have decided to begin my occasional blog about aid effectiveness. I’m aiming to bring together evidence on the effectiveness of aid, ranging from individual projects up to measurements of the overall effectiveness of aid.