General Chat

"my son was helping educate the Nigerian people
in engineering to advance their skills"

Actually, he was helping to educate SOME Nigerian people. INDIVIDUALS.

Did the people he was educating attack his jeep convoy?

Please. Tell us. Maybe he remembers their names.


"and i dont suppose they stole the helicopters
and held it to ransom
no janey everybody can fly one lol twice"

I only wish I knew what this meant.

Are you saying that his students stole helicopters and held them to ransom?

A lot of people in Nigeria can fly helicopters, I don't doubt. There is a lot of military, and various armed rebel groups fighting various conflicts over various causes.

http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-Nigeria.html

Armed Conflicts Report
Nigeria (1990 - first combat deaths)
Update: February 2010

It's a long one ...


JoyBoroAngel, I don't care how many of your best friends are foreigners.

The things you said about people in need of foreign aid were ugly. Just sickeningly ugly.


"after all your country does not pay as much foreign aid
as we do does it"

I already answered the question, before you asked it.

Not these days, we don't. Like I said, we've had a right-wing government for a few years now (and a moderately right-wing "Liberal" government for a while before that). Maybe we can talk when you've had yours for as long. In 1993 our figure was 0.44% of GDP, pretty much what yours is now.

Isnt the old saying :

"Charity begins at home"

Janey i have worked myself for a Nepalese family
loved them to bits
i have worked with a leukemia victim from Iraq
and love her and her family to
so dont play the race card
i dont care what color or creed people are

my son was helping educate the Nigerian people
in engineering to advance their skills
i did not mention the children or women you did

and i dont suppose they stole the helicopters
and held it to ransom
no janey everybody can fly one lol twice

must be a figment of my imagination to hun

quotes you
Cutting foreign aid by even a small percentage could mean that hundreds of thousands of children don't get vaccinated against diseases that no child in our countries will ever know about, and die horrible deaths.

my answer is let your country pay more
till we sort our own country's debts out
after all your country does not pay as much foreign aid
as we do does it

JoyBoroAngel, I don't need to twist your words. You write twisted words.

You said that the people your son was helping attacked his jeep convoy.

I say that is false. I say the people he was helping were largely women and children, and no women and children attacked anything.

I doubt that any of the individual people that your son was helping attacked anything either.

I think you are using unpleasant terms like "those people" and "them" to pretend that one person is the same as another person, and they're all one great big "them", when it comes to people of other colours and cultures and nationalities.

You said the people your son was helping attacked his jeep convoy. They did not.

No more than YOU attacked and invaded Iraq.


"and if bill gates is so clever the amount of money he has
he couldnt spend in a life time
so let him send them aid"

Gee, JoyBoroAngel, there's a name for this. It's called an "ad hominem" (against the man) argument. (I use a term of my own that isn't sexist.)

You can't argue with what Bill Gates said, so you say bad things about him.

Bill Gates actually does donate large amounts of money to many causes. He and Warren Buffett have recently challenged the super-rich to give away half of their own wealth. Maybe that's something else you need to educate yourself about.

When you say about Bill Gates, "so let him send them aid", you just look like you have no idea what you're talking about, but figured you'd say it anyway.

Nonetheless, that has nothing to do with the merits of what he said that I quoted.

Cutting foreign aid by even a small percentage could mean that hundreds of thousands of children don't get vaccinated against diseases that no child in our countries will ever know about, and die horrible deaths.

But hey, they're just "those people", and who cares?

janey you can twist what i say all you like
feel free twist away
i did not say it was women and children

the scandal of Ethiopia spending our aid
was well reported at the time
the facts are there happy Google hun
and wether you have breakfast is no concern of mine what so ever

also the state this country is in at the minute
could just do that bankrupt it
there is not one person in this country
that wont be affected by our current situation
so let us put our own house in order first
nursing homes are shutting here for lack of money
to keep them going what is to become of our old folks
the ones who fought to keep us free people

and if bill gates is so clever the amount of money he has
he couldnt spend in a life time
so let him send them aid

Really JoyBoroAngel?

"janey it was indeed the people he was helping
and it also never stopped them machine gunning
the jeep in front of him in his convoy in Lagos"

The women and children he was helping machine gunned the jeep?


"also we gave aid to Ethiopia
and what did they do
spent it hundreds of thousands of pounds
on their governments entertainment"

THEY? Who are THEY?

THE PEOPLE did not spend the money on their government's entertainment.

I don't get quite so muddled when I think, myself.


"the rich people in these countries are not helping their own people
so why should we "

I dunno.

It isn't raining, so why should I have breakfast?

What do the two things have to do with each other?

Do THE PEOPLE decide what the rich and powerful in their countries do?

NO.

Do you say: My neighbour doesn't give money to the local animal shelter, so why should I? My neighbour doesn't wrap their garbage properly, so why should I?

Again, let's try not to get quite so muddled in our thinking.


If anybody can google, why don't you try it occasionally?

Like I said: educate yourself. About the real real world. Not the imaginary one in which "those people" in developing countries spend their time plotting how many children they can have to make you pay for.


If spending 50p out of every £100 is going to bankrupt a country, it's in worse shape than any of us know.

http://www.poverty.com/internationalaid.html
googgle that janey


see how much aid your country gives compared to ours
maybe yours should give more and ours less
until we are back on our feet

janey it was indeed the people he was helping
and it also never stopped them machine gunning
the jeep in front of him in his convoy in Lagos


also we gave aid to Ethiopia
and what did they do
spent it hundreds of thousands of pounds
on their governments entertainment
the rich people in these countries are not helping their own people
so why should we
while our country is in financial state
i have no problem giving them aid when we are better off
but the truth is we are no in the position to give aid at this time
there are old people in this country scrimping an exsistance and they are the ones who helped make our
country a good place to live
anybody can google Janey try living in the real world
i have no problem them been sent food
but i have cash

Just something from Bill Gates at the link I gave above:

"I am concerned that some of this money [the money cut from foreign aid] will come from reducing other categories of foreign aid, especially health.

If just 1 percent of the $100 billion goal came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases.

In the long run, not spending on health is a bad deal for the environment because improvements in health, including voluntary family planning, lead people to have smaller families, which in turn reduces the strain on the environment."

JoyBoroAngel, what does

"most of the aid given is spooned off by the governments
of these country"

have to do with your appalling comments about the PEOPLE in those countries?

Nothing. Nice try at changing the subject, though.


"and what respect do those people give our aid workers
yes we have all read the news
have you ever had a phone call at 4 am
to say your sons been kidnapped in Nigeria
well i have "

Hey, good for you. And was it the people he was helping who kidnapped him? I'm very sure it was not. So what is your point?

That there are conflicts in the places where aid is delivered? You betcha there are. Children are used as soldiers and have their childhoods stolen and their limbs cut off, in some of those conflicts.

Many of those conflicts are over things like diamonds that are sold to fat rich people in the developed world. Children suffer and die because there is so much money to be made from selling diamonds to fat rich people in the developed world that civil wars are fought over the diamonds. Now that's "aid".

Some of the conflicts are over the things that foreign corporations do when they take oil and other things out of the land so that fat rich people in the developed world can drive their big cars around and text one another constantly. (You do know what blood is being shed over the minerals used in your cell phone?)

And some people in those countries don't like having their environment poisoned and their livestock killed by those corporations, and they try to fight back. Aid workers are the wrong targets, usually, very true.

And some of those conflicts are fought by people who create ethnic/religous hatred in order to gain wealth and power.

And foreign governments often supply the arms the conflicts are fought with.

But none of any of that has anything to do with aid to ordinary people in those countries.

Except to say that if we stopped buying useless trash like diamonds and disposable cell phones and driving big cars everywhere we went, and stopped invading other people's countries and murdering them, there might be fewer problems that lead to poverty and to people kidnapping aid workers.

Does anybody actually know how much the UK gives in foreign aid?

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/2010/Pages/rich-countries-foreign-aid.aspx for 2008

The US gives 0.19% of GDP in foreign aid -- about the worst. That is about $2 of every $1000 dollars of income in the country.

(Canada sucks right now; we've had a right-wing government in power for a while: 0.32%. The average of the developed countries is 0.45%.)

For the United Kingdom, the figure is 0.48% -- about £5 out of every £1000.

That is the equivalent of a person who earns £25,000 a year giving £125.

Less than one-half of one percent of a country's total income is really not a humongous amount.

The UN recommends 0.7% -- £7 on every £1000.

Just to inject a little fact.

Janey while i respect your views i to am entitled to mine also
most of the aid given is spooned off by the governments
of these country as well you must know
and what respect do those people give our aid workers
yes we have all read the news
have you ever had a phone call at 4 am
to say your sons been kidnapped in Nigeria
well i have
fortunately for me
my son was at the time at home on home leave
having arrived home that night
and they had the wrong person
i praised the lord for that even as a non believer

while this counrtry is in such a state
its foreign aid that should be cut
why should we pay for other countries to breed
more kids so more mouths to feed
it goes on in a never ending circle
if they want aid give them contraception

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I really just never ceae to be amazed. Despite myself.

"We" do give "them" contraception, my dear. Family planning services are not as accessible as they should be, (a) because we don't give *enough* aid, and (b) because the RC Church sticks its ugly nose into the process every time women's reproductive health issues come up.

"They" "breed" children because they don't have pensions, for one thing. OAPs in the UK may not have it easy, but they aren't left to starve. The countries in question, e.g. in Africa, do not have economies that will support the elderly through pensions. Their children have to do it.

"They" also do it because they have to live off small farms and the like, and that calls for children to help work the land.

And then there's the small problem of child mortality -- the number of children who simply do not survive, because of hunger and disease and conflict. People have to have enough children to be sure that some make it.

Long experience shows that all people everywhere in the world will choose to limit their family once they have the conditions that make that possible -- access to the methods for doing it, and assurance that limiting the number of children will mean they are better off, not worse off.

They are people, just like us.

Why didn't our own ancestors, all those good white English folk, stop having so many children? Why don't some people even today do the same?

People who have three or four or, heaven help us, more children in developed countries today are putting a huge burden on the earth that they have no business doing, in my ever so humble opinion. A far greater burden, in resource use and waste and pollution, than any child in a developing country will ever create. And the climate change they will contribute to will hurt the people in developing countries far, far more than themselves.

But those children will be fat and happy all their lives -- fat literally, these days -- simply because they had the pure luck to be born in a place where society can afford to send them to school and pay for their healthcare and pay their pensions when they retire.

The way some people talk about other human beings in public, and others chime in to agree, just makes me nauseous, is about all I can say.

This one was funny, though: no charity shops in those nasty demanding overbreeding countries.

Do you actually think those people have money to spend on what charity shops sell? Good lord. Go google "refugee camp Sudan" or "children Congo" or a few others I could suggest. Educate your %$#@ selves.

We have one of those boxes at our Doctor's Surgery & the Charity concerned collects it.
The Veterinary meds,now that is a brilliant idea & personally I've had meds for myself that I've had to stop taking & returned what's left to the Pharmacy to be "disposed" of-I wonder what really happens to them???????

Charity shops....oooh I used to love them,returning home with my "bargain" & hearing a wise voice say either "what the heck is it" or "what possessed you" !!!!!!!! Recently though the prices have rocketed locally & a lot of my friends have said it's really taken the fun out of it.

In our local hospital, we have collection points, such as in opthalmics, we can put our old glasses in there and twice a year the consultants take them to Africa (unpaid, and in their own time), a good idea, doesnt always cost money to donate to a charity. Unless of course, you are one of the doctors, thank heaven for them x

when did anybody last see a charity shop abroad
ive never seen one ever
they dont want second hand they want cash

why cant we all hand our unused medication in and re cycle it abroard
i worked in a vets years ago
and lots of our medication was often old stock
it has a much longer shelf life than it says on the packets

so send it to disaster areas

Exactly Joy & it happens all the time.

With medical charities it is reasonable that resources are pooled to speed up any research as everyone effected will benefit. It does grieve me when there are areas in the UK under such hardship & there seems to be no "Aid" structure similar to the ones put in place for any crisis overseas.

In an ideal World there would be no suffering but when it comes to charities it is hard to say no,harder to understand why (in some cases) countries don't "look after their own"- & now why our own Govt is taking away this 3% that can make such a difference to so many.

It might be a good Idea if those people who Head these Charities took a dip in their very large salaries and refused to have the free cars /subsidised Mortgages etc.**M**.

its an easy question to answer Carla
how may counties sent donations
for the Cambrian flood victims




the answer is NONE

Even though it's a coalition the one side seem more than happy to renage on their election promises (student grants grrrrrrr) to the point I limit what I read or listen to for the sake of my blood pressure.

At one point I had charity envelopes arriving by the cart load & decided to chose a small number of them that related to me. I admit Joy I tend to look at charity requests & think "if it was the other way 'round-would they help me"?

while this counrtry is in such a state
its foreign aid that should be cut
why should we pay for other countries to breed
more kids so more mouths to feed
it goes on in a never ending circle


if they want aid give them contraception