To think Gordon Brown has got it so wrong?

[clarea1]

To pledge £6 million to the Haiti government following earthquake. I appreciate the funds are to help those in the wake of a horrendous natural disaster but I am wrong to think that our country in rather in need of £6 million and in a bit of a crap financial position.

Don't get me wrong I can't even begin to grasp the devastation and I support all the charitable efforts by organisations such as christian aid but this country is in a mess and it is us that are paying the price and facing tax increases etc to foot the bill.

All views welcome!

I know. It is an eye-opener.
It never occurred to me that anyone could actually think like that.

YABVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVU

Yes, I am SHOUTING

OP , you have said that much earlier in the thread but I do have to say something about it.

"Hundreds of women and children die each day in poverty stricken countries in the third world, many of which are have no real medical system, no educational esablishments to speak of.

If you saw those countries as a slow drip feed of devastation compared to the sudden onslaught in Haiti, would it be any different? Where do we draw the line?""

Have you got any knowlege of the history of Haiti? They do not only suffer know because of the earthquaque or even the hurricane they lived though in the recent years, they had decades of "crappy" governement (Pappa Doc, Baby Doc & Les Tontons macoutes are just a few key words you could google to have a general idea))

Since the Father Aristide fiaso (another one you can google), Haiti pretty much does not have a gouvernement either. There is no organised police or fire services, school system...

Morst official organisation of the country is dealt with by UN (this is why there is a high number of UN personel in Haiti)

I am ,as most people, fully aware that there is a awfull lot of countries with their fair share of misery but at the moment, I struggle to understand your op as Haiti has gone through it all : natural catastrophies as well as slow drip feed, to use your own expression.

Does not matter how less "well off" we are this year compared to the last, it does not in the slightest compare with what people in Haiti have lived trough in the past and have to cope with today!

As I sit here in my nice warm house, with a roof over my head, clothes on my well fed body and my healthy children at a school receiving an education, I also think Gordon Brown has got it wrong.

We should be sending more than £6million.

OP did you see those people on the news reports? Pulling their dead relatives out of crushed shacks and watching their babies die as they have no medical facilities, no fresh water and no shelter?

How on earth can you begrudge them 10p of our taxes?

You must have a stone for a heart.

It's such a shame that before Wednesday there seemed to be so many who were completely oblivious to the fact that Haitians have been eating mud for years. Where was the aid then?

Op, I've donated to the DEC fund and you'll be glad to know if put in an extra ten pence for you.

Now you can write to Gordon for your refund.

I think you are being unreasonable.
It's a small amount to us in the scheme of things.

However, you are not alone in questioning it.
I heard people being interviewed on the radio and they were saying 'charity begins at home' etc

Just wanted to thank the OP. Thanks to him/her, I finally switched on my TV and saw the utter devastation that Haitians are facing, leading to MSF receiving the equivalent of 3 months' worth of child benefit, plus a regular standing order, and my DS getting held that little bit more tightly last night. To think that my biggest worry yesterday was figuring out how to get my DS to down some baby cereal and go to sleep at a reasonable time

I'm going to tell myself that the OP is being deliberately trollish to get people donating. I refuse to believe that anyone can be so petty and small-minded.

I am wondering if maybe the thought process behind the OP was a bit of "if the government can sort their priorities to find money for this aid, why can't they sort their priorities more often and get things right here as well?"

I know when I lived in the states, I often got frustrated when the government would say they're sending $X million to help this country or that country (often somewhere they'd just spent $X million bombing or attacking themselves) or on the other hand spending $X billion on something utterly ridiculous or unnecessary (different from aiding someplace) and then say the money isn't there to help pay for medical coverage for children or elderly or help for homeless.

For me, I see it more as "it's good that they're proactive in helping these people, but on a separate note, why can't they be more proactive about sorting out things here that need to be taken care of as well?"

Not sure if I've worded that quite right, but hopefully you see what I mean.

I thought the idea, in the US at least, is that people in a capitalist society should be able to take care of themselves and if they don't it is probably because they are lazy and incompetent so sod them

on war spending yes don't mind money spent to keep a proper army able to defend the country, but waging needless wars at the cost of taxpayers for the benefit of big private companies, well that imo is deeply immoral

begrudging aid to desperate people...

Triggles, I see what you mean, or I think I do. If the public finances were better managed, the UK would be able to afford to allocate more funds to disaster relief and other very worthwhile causes. That is the frustration I feel.

As an aside, don't you think it says something positive about us as a nation, that we are still helping and giving, even when our finances (collectively and individually) are not in very good shape?

I think also that I can see that if someone has a family member that, for example, has cancer and cannot get the medications they need due to the funding and postcode lottery nonsense, that this announcement of £X million given in aid might be a slightly bitter pill to swallow. Not that, again, they begrudge the aid, just that they must feel that their family member dying is a low priority to the government and that's got to be awful too.