Feels Good to Give

Last week I saw a headline in the Daily Mail (I do not read it, just noticed it whilst standing in the queue at Waitrose) about how Britain sends 0.7% of  the national income to foreign aid their complaint was that it is being to used fund palaces of the super rich in those countries instead of going to the poor.

Apparently they got a petition going that clocked up 100K signatures in 24 hours, they said the nation roared.  Well the population of the UK is 64.1 million it is more like a squeak than a roar.

The Huffington Post refutes this story somewhat: In Defence of Foreign Aid

I will be the first to admit that I do not give enough to charities however it nice to know that some of my taxes go people less fortunate that myself in third world countries or places hit by war.  It is putting the Great back into Britain.  According to the Daily Mail:

Britain's aid budget is now second only to that of the US thanks to the Prime Minister's insistence on raising spending to 0.7 per cent of national income.

People complain about migrate workers coming into Britain do you think they would come if their own countries were not ravaged by war or famine and/or other natural disasters.  Whilst we do live on an island we all still live on the same planet.

It is about time Britain gave something back for all the staggering cock ups in history throughout the world all in the name of the Empire.  You can blame whoever was in government at the time but ultimately we the people voted them in or we stood by and said nothing.

Britain has been making a mess of other people's countries since year dot however to name one from the early 20th Century just after World War I, Mesopotamia was broken up by Britain into what know today as Iran and Iraq.  Excerpt from Wikipedia:

Britain imposed a Hāshimite monarchy on Iraq and defined the territorial limits of Iraq without taking into account the politics of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country, in particular those of the Kurds and the Christian Assyrians to the north. During the British occupation, the Shi'ites and Kurds fought for independence, and the British employed Assyrian Levies to help quell these insurrections. Iraq also became an oligarchy government at this time.

I  was not even born yet but it feels like this was birth of bad things in Iran and Iraq, if only we had left them alone.  I will admit however that human nature being what it is I cannot blame all the bad things in the world upon my place of birth.

You think the Americans have had terrible foreign policies in their short history but Britain is a past master of making a pig's ear of foreign affairs.

Feels good to give something other than war.