A lifetime of charity guilt

@forumhostpb wrote:

These soundbites from dear kind Emmaslush are worthy of Alastair Campbell at his best.

“Governments are a problem, but many mouths keep the starving starved.”

“Whilst we live in paradise, it is a must to help in any way.”

“I wonder if its better for the globalised world to keep poor people poor.”

They are as meaningless as they are platitudinous. BTW what the heck is a ”globalised world”??? It sounds deeply significant but what does it actually mean ffs???

GLobalised – according to Emma’s OED means – world wide

FFS we have a world wide world – you learn something new every day !!!

This post is all bull sh!t.

Or do you think your £1 will save the world?

just for the record, I don’t want any brians anyway :lol:

I reckon that because I earn my money it’s up to me how I spend it. If that means blowing it all on a night out, buying a big issue or offering time and money for a good cause then I only have to answer to myself. Whatever I do is out of good intention and not guilt. Too many people are bitter and twisted in this world and don’t give a flying feck about their fellow man (or woman :wink: ). I’m not going to join suit and play follow the leader for a lost cause with people who like to pretend everything is someone elses problem and I’ll do my bit where I see fit 8)

The Victorians in Britain had large families – 6 children was ‘normal’ and families of 10 or 12 were not uncommon. Even allowing for higher levels of infant mortality, this social phenomenon led to a rapid expansion of Britain’s population in the 19th century. Clearly if that trend had continued Britain’s current population would be many times higher. So the idea of population / family size as a social policy is not unrealistic or wrong.

As for USA being to blame for everything: Slavery was a crime against humanity and Britain and America took part in that crime but the slave trade already existed within Africa and in the middle east. Also, any African American alive today owes their existence to the slave trade. We are all chance outcomes of our ancestry and wouldn’t exist if any of our ancestors hadn’t met. Likewise, I possibly owe my existence to my grandfather being invalided out of the army within days of enlisting during the First World War. Had this not happened he might have perished in the trenches and I wouldn’t be here.

@Mr Bigstuff wrote:

Trust me, no Black American will say that they are glad the slave trade happened. Also whatever internal forms of slavery that existed within Africa they were not as bad as the transatlantic trade that killed around 20 million people.

When you consider that the USA holds the global purse strings, it imposes policies on poor countries and gets involved in the political affairs of those countries then yes the USA does have a lot to answer for. It’s not the only country but is the most significant of those countries.

We saw all that fancy talk last year about making poverty history but, as many expected, the politicians didn’t honour their pledges. People should keep giving money to charity because money given to NGOs will definitely go where it’s supposed to go and every little helps.

Have to disagree Mr B

The internal African slave market was greater, caused wider dispersion and affected more Africans than the external market ever did. What the external market did was globalise this appalling trade in human misery. Was it the African countries who cried out for slavery to end? No, it was li’l ole us who eventually found slavery abhorrent. Once the external slavery market was stopped, did slavery die? No, it carried on with it’s own internal African market.

It is history which creates the opportunities or threats for the future- Germany today should never be made apologists for the Nazi regime and Britain today should not be made apologists for a slave trade which we helped stop over 150 years ago.