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Friday 29 January 2010

Slightly Political Rant....

Haiti is in complete chaos. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, been injured, lost their homes etc. Millions of people have been affected. And one of my friends on Facebook has their status as

'Shame on you ENGLAND !!!!!! the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed meds, and mentally ill without treatment - yet we donate £50 million to the people of Haiti ... 99% of people won't have the guts to copy and repost this..............'

This absolutely disgusts me. It isn't about having the guts to repost it - it is about having some sense of how lucky we, as a nation, are. We are so priviliged, and we lose sight of that so much of the time. Yes, our country has problems - I am not denying that, but our poverty gap is tiny when compared to most countries. How can people have the audacity to say that we shouldn't be doing what we can to help Haiti?! They have nothing, and we have so much in comparison - even those of us living on benefits. It makes me sick that there are people in this country, who I consider to be friends, who would rather that our nation did nothing to help countries struggling so much. Nobody in Britain is facing the sort of conditions that people in Haiti are. Everyone here can access free healthcare. There are benefits. There are charities to help people. Our country is by no means perfect, and the problems mentioned in the Facebook status do apply, but they pale into insignificance when compared with the problems faced by less developed countries. Obviously not for the people experiencing them, but surely to an extent you have to look at how society as a whole is functioning?

I would be very interested to hear what other people think about this. Do people agree with the Facebook status? I am not left wing at all, but this really has disgusted me. Rant over!

3 comments:

  1. "99% of people won't have the guts to copy and repost this.............."

    I switch off whenever anyone does this line. It's like those chain emails telling you that you'll be dead in the morning if you don't forward it to a stupid amount of people because of some wonderful internet curse that makes your computer sprout arms to strangle you with.

    It never happens. Reposting that won't verify your level of guts either. Silly people aren't they :)

    I must admit that I often wonder why people don't donate to more charities that are closer to home, but then I also wonder why people seem to care more about animal welfare than child welfare. Everyone is deserving which is the problem. Donations aren't logical things at the best of times. At the same time though, this is a country in immediate crisis and they need immediate charity and immediate cash. Not giving all that money to the Haiti crisis is like helping your mate who's got the flu instead of helping the guy writhing on the floor with appendicitis next to him. Sometimes things need to be put in context and sometimes people need to accept that there just isn't enough money to go around.

    Ramble done :) Lovee and stuff x

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  2. Completely agree with everything you've said, Bip.

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  3. I’m with Em, I tend to ignore anything like that on Facebook, I simply can’t be bothered following the chain, in fact these days FB doesn’t rock my boat!

    As for charity I tend to support local charities and have a few chosen ones I stick to, I just cannot afford to support more than a few.

    As for the Haiti thing, I see no problem with us donating the money we have, as you said compared to Haiti the poverty gap is tiny.

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