Gordon Brown to send £8.5bn to Africa etc

[sasguru]

...and a f**ing huge unemployment problem, not to mention the pathetically low take home pay, due to the fact that companies pay huge amounts into the bloated social security system.

The fact is the average Frog has a much better quality of life than you or me (as opposed to standard of living) is neither here nor there, I suppose?

[Emperor Dalek]

We have been brainwashed into non-government intervention. Every country in the world, including the US, will intervene to save strategic industry. The short-termism of share-holders is not conducive to a country's long-term interests. And no I don't know what the solution is.

Some that have been tried before:

1. Identify national champions and prop them up with tax payers' money no matter what (technically illegal nowadays).

2. Nationalise strategic industries.

3. Issue all overseas aid in the form of credit notes redeemable only at designated national champions.

At the end of the day, a plc can do whatever it likes within the law and hand-wringing about shareholders' short term interests not being aligned with the state's interests only encourages dangerous lefty thinking.

[Jakes Daddy]

Why is he giving so much of our money overseas ?

How will this benefit me and my local community ?

How will it benefit the 94-year old veteran who lives 2 doors down from me who can't afford a daily carer and has to rely on family ?

How will it benefit the family with a spastic child across the road where one parent has had to give up work ?

How will it help the local primary school fund new books because the LEA have cut all budgets ?

How will it help the local church repair the damaged vestry after a fire by yobboes ?

How will it help the local doctors purchase an x-ray machine, so patients can be x-rayed quickly, rather than wait 8 weeks for a hospital appointment.

Gordon ? WTF are you doing ?

Sounds to me like BGG lives in a dodgy area, and I think the best solution for you is to move

JD in "trying to get this thread out of political doom and gloom" mode

[sasguru]

So what? Is it a competition to see who can ease their conciences the most? Sending billions to Africa is like feeding an addict's crack habit. It is a bottomless pit. They are independent nations now. Colonists created and left infrastructure and industry in place. What the feck have the Africans done with it?

The efficacy of the aid is not the point.
Why don't we not give any aid at all and find out what a public relations disaster it is to Britain's image round the world? Countries are selling a brand too - which translates into increased trade opportunities, political alliances etc.
But as I said earlier, it's too much to ask a techie to see the big picture.

[Fungus]

So what? Is it a competition to see who can ease their conciences the most? Sending billions to Africa is like feeding an addict's crack habit. It is a bottomless pit. They are independent nations now. Colonists created and left infrastructure and industry in place. What the feck have the Africans done with it?

My concern is that aid creates dependency.

The real problem is unfair trade. We dump goods such as sugar at below cost price on African markets, and impose tariffs on African goods. Hence African farmers cannot compete. Also we don't allow producers to add value by processing a crop. Thus coffee must be processed in the West and not in the producing nations. It is the processing that adds the real value and where the profit lies.

That is why these countries are basket cases. And without a credible economy, there is no educated middle class, the people remain poor and uneducated, and there is no opposition to the dictators. And one of the biggest barriers to removing unfair trade is the French farming lobby, a group of powerful industrial farmers who seem to have the ear of Chirac.

[Emperor Dalek]

For an excellent (if slightly lefty) overview of how third world producers are being raped by a combination of the supermarkets' stranglehold on the supply chain and the industrial farming lobby, read this excellent book


Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate

An expose of the state of the food production industry in Britain. The author looks at some of the most popular foods we eat to show how the food industry causes ill health, environmental damage, urban blight, starving small-holders in Africa and Asia, and illegal labourers exploited in Britain.

[sasguru]

Good points by both Fungus and Dalek. (Surely you're not suggesting, Dalek, that people challenge their prejudices by looking at the facts? )

The issue is more complicated than it seems. The power of entrenched lobbies means that the average hard-working third-world producer is not adequately compensated. And, yes, the aid money goes to fuel the despots and their fleets of Mercs. Crap all round really.

[hyperD]

For an excellent (if slightly lefty) overview of how third world producers are being raped by a combination of the supermarkets' stranglehold on the supply chain and the industrial farming lobby, read this excellent book


Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate

An expose of the state of the food production industry in Britain. The author looks at some of the most popular foods we eat to show how the food industry causes ill health, environmental damage, urban blight, starving small-holders in Africa and Asia, and illegal labourers exploited in Britain.

Bought that book a year or so ago - now make most of my own food (as does Lucifer Box) which tastes much better and is cheaper than supermarket processed stuff.

[Gold Dalek]

Agreed. The usual short-sightedness. Let's get rid of the last remnant of civilian aircraft manufacturing capacity in the UK, eh?
The French have the right idea after all - 2 now succesful car companies and the lions share of the Airbus

Eventually the wing production would have left the UK for cheap as chips China a la A320 so getting out for billions now could be seen as quite astute

http://english.people.com.cn/200206/...26_98590.shtml

[Gold Dalek]

They are independent nations now. Colonists created and left infrastructure and industry in place. What the feck have the Africans done with it?

See what happened to Rhodesia and what is happening to S.Africa