Jacob Rees-Mogg Redux

FoxEye said:
A generation is roughly 20 years, not the average lifespan.

1980 to present is about two generations.
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Stop being pedantic. The point stands. 35 years is no time at all to make significant changes. The UK only achieved universal franchise in 1928.

You have had all the opportunities the overwhelming majority of Africans have or never will benefit from, yet weren't you living in your parents basement until aged 34? Your ignorance of history and humanity is mind-blowing ;)
 
Liefrich said:
....

Stop being pedantic. The point stands. 35 years is no time at all to make significant changes. The UK only achieved universal franchise in 1928.

You have had all the opportunities the overwhelming majority of Africans have or never will benefit from, yet weren't you living in your parents basement until aged 34? Your ignorance of history and humanity is mind-blowing ;)
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The reality is that for former colonies they've had a *lot* longer than that, even.

We built up infrastructure which has decayed and been destroyed since we left.

Certain countries which were prosperous and thriving as colonies are now destitute.

You can deny the evidence but it's there for all to see.

e: Additionally, many of these "poor" African countries have vast natural resources worth trillions. Yet they remain poor. Mostly because their corrupt governments make deals with foreign companies to extract those resources for well below market value, so long as the officials themselves are well compensated.

It's not going to get any better no matter what we do. They are who they are. Tribal in nature, corrupt, now utterly infused with a "victim" mentality, blaming the West for everything that they won't help to fix themselves.
 
I blame the massive reduction in the FCO / dfid / civil service

Having long term deployed experienced diplomats / FCO people in these countries, they know who to trust, who to give money to, who to avoid, where to spend, where not to spend
without them, you are throwing money across the world without the involvment required to spend it effectively

Rory Stewart talks about this somewhere in great detail

Stopping something because we are not doing a good enough job seems a bit daft to me, would we say the same of the NHS? or Defense?
 
gettothechopper said:
Stopping something because we are not doing a good enough job seems a bit daft to me, would we say the same of the NHS? or Defense?
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Depends if you think the problem is fixable or not. If we might as well be burning the money for all the good it does...

Like I said earlier, I have no problem with the foreign aid budget. Hell I'd pay more. I do find it infuriating that this money is propping up corrupt regimes instead of helping people. Or being invested in infrastructure which is allowed to collapse after a few years of neglect...

Why? Because spending this money poorly just means such nations will always be dependent on hand outs. They will never fix their issues whilst we are pouring in money on band-aid short-term fixes.
 
You can't persuade a people to change when it's alien to their very culture.

They have always sat under a tree most of the day and bone their women at night. Every other day go catch an antelope and have a village feast.
Actually sounds a brilliant lifestyle to me !!
 
D.P. said:
There is plenty of successes with Foreign aid.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/15/ghana-aid-10-years
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It should be noted that that organisation is only partly financed by Foreign Aid. They received $2.2 billion from the private sector.

Nobody is saying all the Foreign Aid budget is wasted, but a lot of it is. I posted that link earlier revealing that 50% of the Foreign Aid given to the UN Syria appeal was wasted on UN bureaucracy. We should always be looking to spend this money better. And if pressure makes the govt stop giving it directly to corrupt regimes in return for "influence", so much the better.

And lastly I'm not one of the people saying we should stop giving foreign aid. I just wish we could trust the people we give it to to use it properly. Otherwise it's a money sink doing nothing (even if that's not universally true).
 
Liefrich said:
....

Stop being pedantic. The point stands. 35 years is no time at all to make significant changes. The UK only achieved universal franchise in 1928.

You have had all the opportunities the overwhelming majority of Africans have or never will benefit from, yet weren't you living in your parents basement until aged 34? Your ignorance of history and humanity is mind-blowing ;)
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But if we started out in Africa, didn't they get a head start on the rest of us?
 
Good improvisation from both the reporter and JRM. Not sure the reporter expected to see JRM and not sure JRM expected to be asked about Japan.

The quip about Peugeot did make me chuckle. I know he's as posh as you can get and he probably is out of touch with your everyday person but I can't help but like him.
 
Outcast said:
You can't persuade a people to change when it's alien to their very culture.

They have always sat under a tree most of the day and bone their women at night. Every other day go catch an antelope and have a village feast.
Actually sounds a brilliant lifestyle to me !!
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If that’s what you think most of Africa is like then you’re simply showing your ignorance.
 
FoxEye said:
There have also been problems, well documented, where sending stuff hasn't worked either.

There are numerous accounts of building wells, which fall into disuse as the villages can't maintain them.

Of sending tractors which lie rusting in a field, because they can't be maintained...

As cruel as it may sound, it appears that some places are simply not equipped to drag themselves into the 21st century. The "white-guilt" brigade will say we are responsible and they would have been so much better off now if we'd never colonised them.

Alternatively, they might still be living in mud huts.
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That’s more an issue with vanity projects. They make great news headlines but are quite useless if they are not backed up with funding for training in the equipments use/maintenance and repairs. It’s no different to what so many political parties do in general. The long term maintenance/funding is never as sexy as the photo with those dozens of new tractors, or large dam/hospital/school.

What aid should be doing is helping countries escape the povert trap. There are many countries that are just too poor (or as you say not equipped) to be able to “drag themselves into he 21st century”. They can’t afford to educate their population, or provide basic healthcare, which means people can’t help educate the next generation or do anything but low skilled jobs (agriculture and resource collection. Skills are lost because death rates are high and birth rates also stay high, diluting out what meagre finances are available even more.

Helping countries provide a basic level of healthcare and education helps them then help themselves. Education helps people to move away from basic agriculture and resource extraction to higher paying jobs, gives people the skills to make better long term development decisions and maintain better, more modern equipment and increases productivity. It empowers women and allows them to start working too, and make more educated decisions on family planning. The increase in healthcare also helps reduce birth rates (if your children are all more likely to survive then you can have less kids) and reduces the worry of premature death.

With well thought out aid allocation a countries chances can change quite significantly and a country “unequipped” for the modern world can find itself on its way to joining it (without any more requirement for aid) in pretty quick timeframes. Obviously aid isn’t the only thing that helps countries on their way, there are a multitude of other development issues that need to be “solved”, and every countries issues are different, but gov to gov aid certainly can help.
 
LabR@t said:
For every guardian article there will be a daily mail article the polar opposite.

They are the same, just different ends of the spectrum.
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You mean apart from The Guardian wins awards for its journalism and The Daily Mail has been banned by wikipedia due to being an unreliable source of information.

And that is irrespective of their political alignments
 
Freakbro said:
You mean apart from The Guardian wins awards for its journalism and The Daily Mail has been banned by wikipedia due to being an unreliable source of information.

And that is irrespective of their political alignments
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award giving luvies read the guardain, what cam I say :D
 
Newspapers%20left%20right%20wing-01.png


In news that will surprise very few, the Daily Mail is seen as Britain’s most right-wing newspaper. Britain’s most read newspaper is described by 44% of Brits as “very right-wing”, far ahead of any other paper. In total, 81% considered the paper to be right-wing to one degree or another.

At the other end of the spectrum the Guardian is seen as Britain’s most left-wing newspaper, closely followed by the Mirror. Whilst Britons were about equally likely to see both publications as slightly left-of-centre or fairly left-wing, slightly more considered the Guardian to be “very left-wing”, at 16% compared to The Mirror’s 11%.
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https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/03/07/how-left-or-right-wing-are-uks-newspapers/
 
Outcast said:
You can't persuade a people to change when it's alien to their very culture.

They have always sat under a tree most of the day and bone their women at night. Every other day go catch an antelope and have a village feast.
Actually sounds a brilliant lifestyle to me !!
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You’ve never been to Africa have you? :p
 
LabR@t said:
award giving luvies read the guardain, what cam I say :D
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The useful thing about the Guardian online is every article is usually full of links to the sources of data used in the article. If you don’t trust the Guardian then the paper provides you the means to look up the information yourself.

It’s something the DM certainly doesn’t do. The fact you fail to understand this perhaps indicates a major lack of critical thinking and a low ability to weigh evidence/follow leads to information.

Edit: And being left or right wing has nothing to do with the quality of the paper. As an example, using your post as evidence, the Times and Telegraph are considered as right wing as the Guardian is left, but would you consider them as (un)reliable as the Mail (or in your case the Guardian)?
 
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