Thursday, 12 March 2009

Comic Soddin Relief

I know i am a miserable old bugger who wees in the milk of human kindness, and laughs at stories of 10 year old girls having their heads bitten off by crocodiles "larger than buses" (ie 40 feet long, 14 foot high and about 10 foot across, weighing around 6 tons - nicely researched Mr Sun Journalist :) )....
So you have probably guessed by now that this is not a piece that is going to include the words "give" and "generously" very close to each other.
I object to the BBC being involved in this. They are not just reporting on it, they are actually giving over many, many hours of TV and radio airtime, and giving their presenters and stars' time all over the place. Radio5 have people in Kenya, Radio1 sent some idiots up Kilimanjaro, the BBC keeps showing us pictures of dying children (which i have learnt are not funny, apparently).
The BBC is funded by taxpayers' money. These celebs are paid from the public purse. How can the BBC refuse to show an appeal for Gaza, but then say we should raise money for a school in Sudan, where the president has just been accused of genocide?
And i dont want to wear a bloody red nose and do something "funny." Wearing pyjamas to school, sitting in custard, getting your head shaved - its just not funny. I dont have spare cash - i have bills to pay, dogs to feed and Costa Coffee refuse to give away free coffee. I have worked hard for 20 years, paid my debts, paid my bills, and when i need a spare 20 quid no one knocks on my door.
Aid doesnt help these people. Since WW2 we have sent over 60,000,000,000 pounds to Africa in aid. (Not just the UK, dont be silly). And we have not spent it wisely. It doesnt matter what we do, the governments have wasted it all. Its not racist to call someone incompetent, and unfortunately that is what the vast majority of African leaders have been. When we started this, 10% of Africans lived in poverty. Today, 70% do. That means the situation is 700% worse.
There is no point sending kids to school - there wont be any jobs for them when they finish. And that is why there is poverty. We have not developed their economies, we have not spent the money investing in infrastructure, in creating wealth. Why are China, India, Indonesia, South America all doing so much better than Africa? Because central governments have planned for the future, they havent just squabbled with their neighbours about diamonds and who should get the bags of rice. This is a massive failing of the World Bank, the UN, the US and UK and all the other huge global organisations who are run by the rich Western countries who quite like the status quo. One day the Americans will work out that there are a billion potential customers in Africa, and then copy the Chinese who are all over the continent building roads, bridges, railways, hotels - investing in infrastructure.
So if it makes you feel better to buy a red nose and act like an idiot, do it. But please dont think you're really helping.
The West could put clean drinking water into every African village tomorrow if it wanted to. Just think of the numbers.
The banks just got 700,000,000,000 pounds
Comic Relief collects 30,000,000 pounds.
Put your money back into your own family, and vote for the party that promises to put water into every village. Then you would have made a change.
But then you wont get your own name read out on the radio, or maybe even on telly. So you wont...

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