£60 million to go to Pakistan

[strawberry17]

The following appeared as a status update on facebook and I got into a very heated debate with some people about it, I'm curious to know what mumsnetters make of it, I have my own thoughts on these statuses but just wondered if I'm a minority in my view.

"The government
announced that they are going to give £60 MILLION to Pakistan. We
have Troops without proper equipment.....Yet we donate millions to
other countries before helping our own first...... 99% of people on
facebook won't have the guts to copy and repost this...!!!!!! WILL
...YOU, I thought charity began at home."

Aid agencies are fantastic bodies set up and ready to go at any emergency. They don't pick and choose which human beings to help they just do the job in hand.

how can anyone class this as racist or veiled racism??? people are entitled to their own views...people probably felt the same when their was the tsunami but the racism card wouldnt have been pulled out, as soon as its pakistan things change. personally if I had family their my opinion may be a little differnt, 60 million shared betwee everyone in this country is hardly anything, but still if people feel different that isnt racist in anyway, stupid to even bring that up.

Sparkyjules. Why is it vile? Why are we giving money to a country that is so corrupt? The money does not go to the people anyway. This country needs the 60million especially now!

complimentary - That is why the money is not going to the government, it is going to aid agencies as the others said. That way it can actually get to the people rather than the "fatcats" in the government who do not give a damn about the people.

I was surprised that while the government was happy to slash budgets arbitrarily across the board at 25%, they did not cut the foreign aid budget.. why?

The problem is countries want more babies to work when they grow and make more money and more babies that need more houses and so on and they can all pay more tax.
The problem is they build their houses on flood plains, The same is happening in USA and UK. More houses need more drains because of more consumption of water, nobody thinks about where the water is going when it rains.
If they thought about it a bit more and built where the water would not go and made drains big enough then they wouldnt have the problem in the first place. Besides there is plenty of money in Pakistan, their problem is there is the very rich, and the very poor, its all a matter of distribution of wealth.

Development money is not just a matter of bleeding hearts. Think about it: if poor countries get less poor, their people become more educated and healthier, more able to travel to/study in the UK [ie spend money here], their governments and people become more able to buy British exports; they would be less likely to be caught up in illegal activity affecting the UK, eg drugs/people/arms trafficking, terrorism, whatever else you can think of, and you hope you get into a virtuous circle of greater prosperity leading to better services provided for people and more responsible governance, with more prosperous, less needy people, and a more stable country overall.

And it shouldn't be an embarrassment that there's an element of self-interest in development strategy, as long as there's also room for speedy humanitarian responses when situations demand them. And we're lucky here that there are some extremely capable aid agencies based in the UK - that often work very closely with the British government - which can be part of the solution.

If Pakistan collapses, this will be an awful lot worse - not to mention more expensive - for Britain than forking out an extra £60 million to help alleviate the immediate impact of the floods.

What about the poor here? Giving away £60 million to a country that has a nuclear capability - absolutely bloody shocking