Quote Originally Posted by ian 2411 View Post
I thought this thread was about foreign aid, but if you are talking about cold cash then it is now out of order. The UK, the USA, and some countries in Europe have been giving monetry aid to certain countries for decades, and these countries are no further forward now than they were when we started. You can also bet your life that they will be back again next year with the begging bowl, for the western suckers to fill it up. I am not against aid, i am for it, but if we went out and developed their countries and built their factories, working out a plan for them to stand on their own feet, well that is diferent. These countries wont allow that though and why, because it makes them look silly in the eyes of the world, but begging for a few billion here and there dooes not count. Charity does begin at home, and if your own country is in shit state like the UK is at the moment, what are we doing giving away £3.5 billion to aid countries through the CO2 capping? the mind bogles to find the reason for putting our own country in debt to help countries that do not want to help themselves. We have 4 million on unemployment benafit with only a million job vacancies, that even students straight out of collage are being turned down for, because they have not been trained. These countries that beg for aid should be told, show us what you have done with the last few billion, other than line your own pockets, and we might lend you some more, let's get out of this stupid act of giving, and getting nothing in return except the finger when you ask them to help in time of troubles.
You seem to overlook, especially in the case of the British colonies, that rather than helping these emerging nations that relied upon the Mother Country for support, and investment we chose to bleed them dry of their natural wealth (not to mention their cultural riches) and to use it for ourselves. In return we told them that they were British and were entitled to come to the UK and we promised them they could live the good life there. We lied. But we always did. So nothing new there.

So let's try to return the favour now. We will probably manage to make a profit out of doing so, so what's holding us back?

We, like all wealthy people (and we are the 4th/5th richest nation in the world), stay rich because we take from others and never give back - at least not until whatever we took is no longer of any use to us. WE might have a lot of debt. We have far more credit.