General Chat

I wrote a really long post here...and the internet cut lol...you lucky people ;) ( NB how disadvantaged are we when we can still afford to discuss this on our PCs !)

So I'll quote instead:

"In order to meet the UN recommendations on ODA, the UK has committed to spend 0.7% of its gross national income on overseas aid by 2013. In response to those who advocate cuts, Andrew Mitchell is categorical: "We won't balance the budget on the backs of the world's poorest people."

Critics of ODA expenditure would find it hard to argue with that sentiment. The problem arises from the incongruity between this moral concern for the poorest in the global community and the failure of the coalition to make similar ringfenced commitments for the most vulnerable in our own society."

Just read that again , 0.7% ....anyone really think if this country can't be financed on the other 99.3% we DON'T give out , that the 0.7 is going to make a difference?

Don't, please, begrudge the aid to those who really do need it ( whether they have millionaires in their country is irrelevant, so do we!) ....begrudge the waste of that 99.3%, which is down to greed, incompetence and criminal waste of resources...(as well as a world recession.)

Just a point re Portugal no money will be going to them from us...any money going to them ( and that will be more acting as a 'guarantor' rather than cash itself) will be given by EU countries which use the Euro.

At worst we will be acting as 'guarantor to the guarantor' .

Our currency is NOT the Euro and we should never have entered into an agreement to bail anyone who is imho...either as guarantor or lender or whatever the circumstances of the 11th hour deal struck just before the election was.

Thanks for that Mr Darling !! NOT !

Sorry, julia, but what you said was:
"Just think what a lovely National Health Service, we would have in this country, just as a for instance, if Dashin' Dave was not giving all that £675 million away to a country ..."

You didn't say "Just think what a lovely National Health Service, we would have in this country, just as a for instance, if Richard Branson endowed a few hospitals ..."

So what you were saying didn't seem to have much to do with where you started out, which was by talking about Pakistani millionaires attending a cricket match.

"We do not have a say in/and to whom, aid is given by the government of this country, by the means of our taxes."

Yes you do. You get to vote. And if you, collectively and in at least a plurality, keep voting for right-wing governments who see it as in their interests to prop up corrupt governments, that's what you get.

Our Conservative government was in the process of spending I don't know how many billion dollars on new military planes when it was brought down last month. I didn't vote for them, so I'll complain all I like. But if I'd voted for them, I wouldn't look too clever doing that.

Again, just to be clear: money given to governments like Pakistan's is *not* humanitarian/development aid.

And it isn't really ... productive ... to complain about money given to the government of Pakistan and use that to launch a complaint about foreign aid generally.


"This choice and the right to say it, is my God given right, as are my beliefs on the same.
My daddy, and many thousands like him, fought in a war so that I and my siblings and our families, could maintain that right, and our freedom, in this country. "

As usual, I have no clue what that was in aid of.

You just go ahead and say what you like.

So will I.

I assume that's okay with you.

that was my point Muffy we AREN'T bailing anyone out,

but the fact remains that we sell 50% of our exports to EU countries...so if they go down we will go down also, whatever the rights and wrongs of us being 'in Europe', we need their economies to be stable to buy our stuff!...and Germany is recovering well from recession apparently.

Well whatever way you want phrase it we're having to commit money to *helping* (shall we say) Portugal on the road to financial recovery when the whole reason they've had to ask for help is because they can't manage to put their cuts measures through !!! Yet we're having to swallow them ourselves for the greater good...Pffft.

**edit*** I saw an interview earlier which said that if Portugal continue to refuse to implement the necessary cuts then they WILL most definately default on their loans (and..why would they implement them in the future when they've refused to now)....so that's the point when we and other EU members have to come in with the cash to cover it....

It'll Spain next...wonder who will bail US out should the need arise considering we're not even in the currency (sensibly so) in the first place !!!