David Craig, on November 12th, 2014During the dreadful 1984 Ethiopian famine, we all gave lots of money to Sir Bob’s Band Aid to help feed the starving. Sir Bob has, if I remember correctly, repeatedly denied reports that Ethiopia’s Marxist government sold large quantities of the food we donated to Russia in exchange for weapons. I found another lovely story that in 1984, when over 1,000 Ethiopians a day were dying from starvation, Ethiopia’s government bought 480,000 bottles of Scotch whiskey for a celebration of their tenth year in power http://hornaffairs.com/en/2014/10/27/ethiopia-buys-liquor-1984-famine/
Anyway, this time Sir Bob is raising money to fight Ebola. The problem is that those countries with Ebola outbreaks have already had plenty of money in aid. But almost all that money has been stolen by the incompetent corrupt rulers of those countries:
If these countries’ rulers hadn’t stolen so much money, then they would have had all the clinics and doctors they needed. Moreover, their people would have been better educated and have food and water and roads and all the other basics of a civilised society so there probably wouldn’t have been any Ebola outbreak in the first place.
The professional hand-wringers bleat “we need a new Marshall Plan for Africa”. But the Marshall Plan gave a devastated Europe around $20bn a year (in today’s money) for five years to rebuild after WWII. Since 1965, Africa has had $1trn in foreign aid. That’s $20bn a year for almost fifty years – equivalent to 10 Marshall Plans – and most of the continent is still mired in poverty and destitution.
The people responsible for Ebola and all Africa’s many problems are Africa’s leaders. Not us in the West.
So, in answer to the question “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” – yup, every time someone raises money for the latest catastrophe in Africa, it’s definitely Christmas for this lot – Africa’s worthless, greedy, brutal, corrupt, kleptocratic rulers.
As for ordinary Africans – with the rulers they have, they’ll be waiting an awful long time before Christmas ever arrives for them, however much money Saint Bob manages to raise.
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African rulers, if known to be corrupt, should be shunned like the criminals they are instead of shaking hands with the Queen at nice Commonwealth jollies.
In fact they should be arrested for genocide and/or theft of aid monies as soon as they set foot outside Africa into a civilised countries, for example when they are in Switzerland visiting their banks.
At least people are choosing to give to this. But the Government is also given money to all these currupt rulers. In fact Cameron And co have actually increased the amount . At a time when the Goveronment is borrowing to make uo the shortfall between what its collecting through all taxation and what its spending.
This is like someone who has not enough income to support the household borrowing not only to make up the differance but also so they can make donations to charity which adds to the interest they have to pay on their loan.