How so? It would just need to be administered properly... and yes I realise that's a really big ask from the government!
Nick Griffin on Haiti
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It's well known that the elderly, in particular, miss out on means tested benefits. I have seen it stated that that there are more eligible benefits unclaimed, than there are claimed fraudulently, although that wasn't specific to the elderly.
Your right though...we should be able to change that and come up with a system that targets those in need.
Your right though...we should be able to change that and come up with a system that targets those in need.
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Oh, absolutely.
So when every homeless person is off the street, no child is in poverty, or abused. No wife is beaten. Cancer has been cured and so on, foreign charities can have a share of the pie.
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Well luckily most British people don't take such a selfish nationalistic attitude and we will continue to help people affected by these natural disasters...even if they are Johnny foreigner.
Taxes go towards this nations security. Healthcare, schooling, military, housing, OAPs, JSAs etc. etc. etc.
As most of us work or have worked and pay taxes we contribute to our own security as a nation. If people are really that concerened and agree to giving this security to the welfare of people in Haiti, maybe they should give up this security and go and help them yourselves contributing it to the Haiti effort instead of just sitting around agreeing that people that are concerened with other priorities should have their security just handed away also.
It's sad what has happened in Haiti, its a natural disaster. This country is heading towards a disaster of its own doing which in any nation is even sadder.
As most of us work or have worked and pay taxes we contribute to our own security as a nation. If people are really that concerened and agree to giving this security to the welfare of people in Haiti, maybe they should give up this security and go and help them yourselves contributing it to the Haiti effort instead of just sitting around agreeing that people that are concerened with other priorities should have their security just handed away also.
It's sad what has happened in Haiti, its a natural disaster. This country is heading towards a disaster of its own doing which in any nation is even sadder.
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I have a problem with that. To sit here in our opulence and say that our nation's healthcare, military, housing etc. is somehow more important than anyone else's, in my opinion, is not right. As a single nation we cannot support the world, but we should be ambitious and looking towards a situation where everyone looks after each other, where national borders are not important. It's going to take a revolution for it to happen, but we have to at least begin to think that way before that revolution will come. It would probably only take the "unification" of the European Union and United States to begin this process, and the addition of Japan and China to this global union would determine such a course for the remainder human history.
Right now the situation in the third world is absolutely dire. The daily plights of billions of people are so terrible, that it makes us seem pathetic worrying about whether to have zinfandel or merlot. With the help of everyone we can empower these people to grow and improve their immediate society, but it takes their inclusion in a "global society" to make it happen. Think of it as an investment. We educate our children because we know that, whatever the cost, it pays dividends many many times over in the long-run. The situation is the same with places like Haiti - they may not be able to bring themselves out of poverty, like a child may not be able to properly educate itself, but with the appropriate "leg up" they can grow and become productive.
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Until we sort ourselves out, we shouldn't be helping anyone else. This country is completely buggered IMHO, there is so much wrong that needs fixing. Charity should come from a position of stability, strength and security.
A damn fine point and well put.
As long as the rest of the world is doing the same then i'm all for it.
The problem with that approach is that, at what point do you determine what we have sorted ourselves out? Being "sorted out" is all relative. We are more than "sorted out" by billions and billions of people's standard; we are living lives they could only dream of. At what point do the needs of ourselves become more important than those of others? There is looking after oneself, and then there is contributing to the continuing and growing disparity of health, wealth and happiness.
I will try and draw an analogy: You are in a room. A bomb goes off, and you find yourself badly injured, yet someone else in the room is bleeding heavily. I think almost anyone in this situation would immediately turn their intention to the person less fortunate than they are in an attempt to save their life, even if it were to mean a longer period of "only agony" for oneself. You wouldn't dream of sitting there patching up your mostly superficial wounds, making dinner and putting on make-up as the person lies dying next to you. This is similar to the situation we face in terms of poverty in the world today. We are literally having a gold tooth implanted as large parts of the rest of the world bleed to death in the corner.
In situations where we let our better natures preside, which often happens when you experience a disaster with someone else, we work and support each other fantastically well, ensuring an equality of whatever it happens to be, be it food, water, natural gas etc. It is when we are content and when the disaster isn't on our doorstep that we tend to forget. Well, we shouldn't. The people in Haiti aren't bacteria on another world thousands of light years from here, they are living, breathing individuals, like you and I, that are very, very close to home.
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No offence mate but the choice between your life (a stranger) and the family dog is a no-brainer. The dog wins hands down; every time. I'm surprised you find it so surprising.
I cannot agree with you there. A human life can go on to do many things, meet many people, change hundreds of lives and interact in ways that a dog simply cannot. I think saving the human life would be the no-brainer thing to do.
I mean, I love dogs and have owned one, but at the end of the day, they are merely dogs, relatively speaking.
If someone in Haiti had to make the choice between their cat and your mum's survival - which would you hope they chose?
I am certainly not in the business of quoting religious texts, but I think this is rather pertinent:
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself
More often we need to exercise our grey matter and call on the empathy that we have been blessed with.
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it's easy to say that but what if the choice were your friend or someone you've never met, would your choice be so easy then? I think not.
i'm of two minds, if we can afford this and it's not going to detract from anything else our government budgets for (military, NHS, essential services etc etc) then why not give what we can when we can? but throwing money at a group of people we have, up until now, had largely nothing to do with, when we simply don't have the money to support our own people then is it something we should be doing? i personally think it's not.
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I still don't know why we quibbling about this tbh, 20 million is a grain of sand in our annual budget, an extra 20 million spent in our own country is hardly going to make any radical changes if any tbh, I'm sure we factor in support for other countries in our budget anyway.
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If we lived in Utopia - or if the Empire still stretched as far as it once did I would agree.
But no, I do not belive we should be helping any other nation, especially right now. This country has serious problems of its own.
Afterall, who would help us - for free? No one.
If the choice was between a friend and someone I've never met, then it would be a totally different situation. The other poster was talking about his dog and a stranger, not two human beings. If things were to be in such a dire situation that we had to start making choices between species, then we would have to choose humans. We are the best hope for every living thing's survival (and also the best chance of their destruction).
To the actual question of whether I would choose a friend or a stranger, probably a friend. I have more trust in said friend to help out during the oncoming nuclear winter, or whatever global catastrophe it would take for us in the UK to have to start choosing who lives and who dies. The fact of the matter is we are not choosing whether someone in the UK lives or someone in Haiti lives, we are talking about the whether someone in the UK has a slightly lower quality cut of beef this week. The size and significance of the problems we have here and enormously different to those in Haiti.
What you are suggesting is that the continuing affluence of a small portion of society is more important than improving the general affluence of all of society (and of course, for a while, the level of affluence for the best off will reduce). There's nothing wrong with that - it's one of the fundamental ideological differences between people. However, I think popular opinion is about to swing towards affluence for all. I say that, as globalisation, and the global communications and media it brings with it, is exposing us at a very early age to the lives of other people all around the world. I think this is making us feel far less separate from the problems of society in certain areas of the globe than we have traditionally.
I'm sorry but this is simply not true. We do not have "serious problems". Please point to a single "serious problem" in British society, bearing in mind that this will stand relative to the poverty and starvation experience by billions of people. Your assertion that no-one would help us is also absurd. You are mixing the wills of people with the wills of governments.
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Serious relative to our history, and perhaps the Western world.
Billions of people are in povery, but the western world has given trillions in aid. There is a pattern here.
E.g. "the West spent $2.3 trillion in foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get 12 cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $4 bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $3 to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths."
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This is a Utopia compared to how some people are living in third world countries, millions of human beings have lost their homes in Haiti, tens of thousands dead, and those that have been displaced don;t have a 'dole' office they can go to to get money for free, they are completely on their own, no help = high probability of malnutrition and eventual death, families lives torn apart, we as more developed nation have an obligation to help, we as human beings in a better position have an obligation to help those in need, the idea that we can only help if our country is in a state of 'economic perfection' is ridiculous, where do you draw the line on helping another nation, when every single person in our country has 'x' amount of money in their acc's and at least a 3 bedroomed semi ?, seriously it really honestly tears me up seeing some of the views in this thread, how people can be so thoughtless and selfish bewilders me.
And with regards to the importance of a loved animal vs a strangers life that is ridiculous, I've had dogs over the years that truly loved but I would put them to sleep with my own hands to save a strangers life.
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