G7 & Third World debt
Tonight reader readers, I am drinking some decent cognac as I type - so normal apologies apply & please excuse me as I drink a toast to the G7 finance ministers. Yes, tonight I am toasting them in general & Gordon ‘utter communist’ Brown in particular, for giving away our money. So Gordi, you piece of utter pondlife, a big thank you for writing off the debts of various tin pot third world countries. Bye bye taxpayers money! Funny isn’t it that the Scots have this reputation for thriftiness expect when it is other peoples dosh & it is the hands of old tax & waste himself – then there is more splashing around than a Jacuzzi full of full of epileptics.
So Brown wants the meeting to be remembered as "the 100% debt relief summit". Well, if you are in such a magnanimous mood, could you phone up Barclays, Mastercard, Visa, Amex & Abbey National & get Family FM some 100% debt relief, Gordi old boy. If it makes it any easier, I will run up a few bill’ of debts first. Promise only to spend any loans in the finest traditions of 3rd world leaders - you know, fleets of blacked out Mercs, the odd modest palace – usual stuff, nothing flash.
Then on last Friday night former South African president, Nelson Mandela (another ‘former’ communist) backed fatty Brown's plan when he urged the finance chiefs to write-off African debt and provide an extra £26.69bn a year in aid for the next decade. So ex-Pres M, when you ran the RSA, exactly how much did you spend on arms contracts – while the majority of your nation lived below the poverty line – well at least those who weren’t dying of Aids, were.
"We could be at the beginning of the final stage of the process where the debts that were owed by the poorest countries, built up over 20 or 30 years, debts that are simply unpayable in the real world, are finally taken care of,"
thinks Brown, adding
"It is the richest countries hearing the voices of the poor."
Much more likely it is a few politicians seeking to aggrandise themselves with other peoples money. It is not relief from debt that third world needs, it is relief from bad government & the ability to compete in free markets. Writing of billions of debt will achieve absolutely nothing because I can guarantee you now, that before you can say the begging bowl is out again, there will be demands for the West to write new loans.
I completely fail to see why the British taxpayer should be made to pay for the failure of government & poor economic policies to some fly blown hellhole in Africa or Asia ... but then that is why I am not a politican, with so-called global perspective.
Comments
Abso-bloody-lutely. Isn't it funny how the Western "pollutitions" have no concept of reality. (Hilarious, you might add).
As an ex-Zimbabwean farmer, I hope I speak with a little authority on the subject, when I say that African countries will never throw away the begging bowl - it's so much easier to beg than do an honest day's work.
Debt relief should not be part of the agenda. Instead we need to see a form of re-colonisation of Africa. Not in terms of military occupation (although that is not without merit), but more in terms of economic colonisation. Perhaps a bit of carrot and stick approach. African countries should allow westerners to run their economies and once the situation improves, then they might be relieved of some of their debt burden.
Reality is give and take, not just take, take, take, take...........something Africa still hasn't worked out (and probably never will).
Posted by: Zimfarmer | February 9, 2005 1:49 PM
As an ex-army man, my preference is also for a "carrot and stick" approach to the problems of Africa.
Stick: 7.62 FN
Carrot: see above.
Posted by: Keith | February 9, 2005 5:10 PM