I may not be popular for saying this but...

edanto

Vegeta wrote:

I personally think its down to education on a wide variety of topics such as health(HIV), family planning, agriculture, literacy.

Hell yeah. That stuff costs money though and the World Bank make poor countries promise that they will charge for services like education and healthcare (essentially so that they can pay the interest to the American dominated World Bank); with the net result being that in some countries the price of ONE years education for ONE child is the same as the average ANNUAL wage. That sucks. Which of your brothers and sisters would your parents have chosen to go to primary school? It ain't fair and something should be changed about it. Fuck those bankers for being so greedy.

I know charities are doing there best.

And they often need moral and political support at home.

I think the charities have the right attitude but they are only repairing woodworm on a ship that is on fire. Inevitably it is going down

Hell no. Things are actually getting better, I think. For the first time in ages, people in countries like this are having detailed discussions about poverty, the whys and the how-not-to kindof discussions. With an election coming up, this could be an issue if people started asking their TDs about it.

Seriously, if we could convince the worlds governments to spend the same amount of money on poverty reduction each year that they spend on Weapons every twelve hours (or something) then we could give about a billion more people a basic standard of living. Any political party that campaigns on those lines would be popular for saying that. It's sooo worth doing.

Tha Gopher

Degsy wrote:

Not a friend of a friend i'm afraid,its a relative of mine who works in the bank as i've made clear.The whole thing about people working in the jacks evolved from me complaining about having to pay tax to support people who either dont want to work or are forbidden to do so and are doing so anyway.My point throughout has been that i cannot afford to help people in other countries because because enough money is taken out at source in this country and its not as if the cost of living is low here either.Also,the 1000 euro may fall short of my "friend of a friend story" but did it occur to you that a pub could be bigger or smaller,there's no gold standard on how much they make per pub.
What you said to me was "so stop posting, ok yeah?"..you didnt say it to anybody else during the course of this discussion,you might also note that there were a few "observations" made about me personally which i refused to rise to yet i'm the one degrading what people have said?I'm sticking to the rules remember.

Degsy, your not being politically correct. Get out.


Re the lads in the jacks, exactly what cut does the bar get? I really cant imagine that your average Dublin nightclub owner is big hearted enough to allow some poor African to take up residence in the bogs and make a few grand a night, and it would be a few grand. As Degsy says, if you have, say Spirit, a club that holds something like 1500 on a Friday/Saturday and has three male toilets with one attendant each, thats 750 men using 3 toilets average. Say they go 3 times a night, spending an average of 5 euro in that time (might not tip the first time, come back twice later for sprays, tipping an average of 2 or 3 euro). 750 men give 4 grand to 3 male toilet attendants. I really cant imagine a nightclub that charges Dublins highest door charges and drinks are fairly pricey, allowing these 3 lads to walk out with over a grand a piece.

DadaKopf

DadaKopf wrote:

Done to themselves? You mean when Apartheid-era South Africa funded paramilitaries to destabilise Mozambique in order to ensure a cheap workforce? Or like when the CIA assasinated Congo's president in the 1960s to make sure Western firms could continue operating there with ease because they could buy off the dictator they installed? Or like the way the IMF and World Bank have reduced African governments' abilities to decide their own development policies? Or the WTO that steamrolls over the needs and desires of the majority of the world's population in favour of the ultra-rich minority?

DadaKopf, you think this removes any reponsibility from the African people for the situation they find themselves in? I haven't said that Western influence hasn't caused many of the problems in Africa. Both colonialism and present day foreign & trade policies by many western nations have caused many issues in Africa that continue to destroy hope.

However, I was pointing out that the African countries, tribes, peoples, have a habit of ****ing themselves over, all by themselves. Wars in Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda etc. Have connections with the past and western involvements, but its was the African people themselves that played out the wars.

Until the African people (mass generalisation) move away from the gun, and start developing their countries themselves, nothing will change. Some African nations have made moves towards this, but many more continue to lower their situations. And foreign aid and the expectation that we should bail them out doesn't help.

Vegeta

edanto wrote:

Hell no. Things are actually getting better, I think. For the first time in ages, people in countries like this are having detailed discussions about poverty, the whys and the how-not-to kindof discussions. With an election coming up, this could be an issue if people started asking their TDs about it.

Seriously, if we could convince the worlds governments to spend the same amount of money on poverty reduction each year that they spend on Weapons every twelve hours (or something) then we could give about a billion more people a basic standard of living. Any political party that campaigns on those lines would be popular for saying that. It's sooo worth doing.

Sorry i am not contradicting what you are saying but I couldn't help but picture Sorcha from the Ross O Carroll Kelly books when i was reading that.

edanto

Me too, when I was typing it!! hence the 'soooo'

I do believe I even took out my scrunchy, put it back in and pulled a few strands of hair loose ;-0

'Tis a bit fluffy what I was saying, but I believe it. Would you do anything about it, like a mail to your TD?