Asking 'does aid work?' is as absurd a question as 'do schools work?' or 'is government good?' Some aid works well and some doesn't. Sometimes schools fail. Sometimes governments get things wrong.

A UK taxpayer earning £30,000 per year will pay £7,065 in tax. Of that, £67 will go to the aid budget and £403 towards defence. That leaves £6,595 for everything else. A proper debate about government spending should surely recognise that pitching defence spending against aid is like robbing a pretty hard-up Peter to pay an even more impoverished Paul.

The prime minister is a development champion at home. He has yet to show whether he will do so in Europe. He made a promise to the world's poorest. Today he can deliver.

Our Olympic and Paralympic heroes deserved every bit of the great parade we saw last week. But why didn't this celebration happen again yesterday? That's when the UN announced that the number of children dying each year under the age of five has fallen by 41% since 1990. While 12 million died in 1990, just under seven million lives were lost in 2011. That's 14,000 a day less than were dying in 1990. The progress made in reducing child deaths must be one of the biggest success stories of the last decade. Yet there was no tickertape parade.

I'm not saying everything I know in life I learned from Hong Kong Phooey. But somehow, it was the opening seconds of that legendary TV cartoon that sprung to mind recently when news broke from Washington of a big step forward in the fight for transparency in the oil, mining and gas industries, meaning African citizens can begin to ensure the rewards of natural resources don't end up in the wrong hands.

This week we celebrated Nelson Mandela's 94th birthday and it is a time for us to reflect on the achievements of the great man. I was lucky enough to share a stage with him in Trafalgar Square in 2005 for Make Poverty History. Today we still share a belief that what we pledged to do that day can be achieved.

Today we are squaring up to big oil. Adverts will appear in papers across Europe shining a spotlight on a few corporate lobbyists who are trying to water down a new law that could transform millions of lives. It's an unusual move for us. But it might be the most important campaign we have ever run. Here's why...