NZ stingy
Getting told off by Bob Geldoff that we are stingy is one thing (I mean Bob is cross at everyone) but getting told off that we are a bunch of unhelpful Hobbits by Bono is like the difference between getting yelled at by the local drunken priest and having the Holy Spirit turn up and give you a grilling. NZ contributes .27% of our GDP to help others which ranks us shit internationally, Bono is here in November and intends to remind people that we said we would all make history poverty. It’s one of those issues that will have all sorts of people crawling out from under their stones to criticize the idea that a bunch of people can get together and change anything, but then again, those are the people who would have railed against women getting the vote as well, so the less heard from them, the better.
Even the Sunday Star Times editorial sided with Bono...
It is time for New Zealand to help make poverty history. The MPH campaign scored spectacular international successes last year -successes that throw an ugly light on New Zealand's efforts. Our overseas aid spending, as Bob Geldof told the government in July, is disgraceful and pathetic, among the worst in the OECD. We have not pressed hard for debt relief for the most wretched countries. And our stance on trade issues has been brainlessly purist, an unbending free-market approach that damages the interests of the Third World. New Zealand needs to do much better - and the MPH campaign might help force the government to do so.
With a surplus in the billions, Bono rightfully shames us.
Join the Make Poverty History petition by texting "click" to 8466
Go to www.makepovertyhistory.org.nz and sign up online.
posted by Bomber @ 7:38 am
6 comments
6 Comments:
At a U2 concert in Glasgow, Bono asks the audience for some quiet.
Then in the silence, he starts to clap his hands.
Holding the audience in total silence, he says into the microphone
"Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies".
A voice near the front pierces the silence;
"Well, stop f*cking doing it then".
I am unsure as to how this campaign is going to necessarily solve anything, there is no logical reason for people to die of starvation in Africa, with some of the most fertile farmland in the world, people are not starving in most cases, they are being starved. Look at Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Darfur, Ethiopia under Mengistu, hunger was used as a weapon by various governments as a means of suppression and its hard to say how a campaign like this will necessarily change anything...
Interestingly, nowhere in the world has there ever been a famine in a country with democracy and a free press...it would be a start to see some of that in Africa rather than the brutal authoritarian, (And generally socialist) regimes which feature all over the continent
Why is it our fault Africans can't feed themselves? If I want to help others, I would rather send my money back to my rellies in Samoa. It is no-one's business what I or we do with our money. Bono is a self-righteous ass. Whatever we decide to give is enough. Governments in those countries should not oppress their people. I have given to charities in the past, but then you hear that half of what you give is used up in administration costs etc, and then a lot of the food aid or whatever is intercepted by militias and appropriated for use by the enemies of those you are trying to help, or by the (inevitably corrupt) governments in Africa.
`Our overseas aid spending, as Bob Geldof told the government in July, is disgraceful and pathetic, among the worst in the OECD. We have not pressed hard for debt relief for the most wretched countries. And our stance on trade issues has been brainlessly purist, an unbending free-market approach that damages the interests of the Third World. New Zealand needs to do much better - and the MPH campaign might help force the government to do so.`
But our GDP and economy is not on a par with most of those in the OECD...we are relatively poor in terms of gross income, and taxed highly. And who is Bono to tell us what to do with our money? We have been supporting the Pacific Island nations very generously for years. Charity begins at home, and then close to home, and finally far from home.
...
Wow, so much hate posting in one blog - 'why are hungry people hungry' asks one, 'it's their fault' yells another - has selfishness and lack of compassion for your fellow man fallen to your levels nationwide? I so hope that isn't the case.
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