Make Love Not War, actually no, lets buy more aircraft carriers!
LIAM FOX is the UK’s Defence Secretary which basically means he’s in charge of wars and stuff, not sure if that means stopping them or organising them, will get back to you on that. Whereas some of his peers have to do boring stuff like you know make sure pensions are paid and that hospitals have enough drugs, Liam gets to play with planes, tanks and bombs, cooollllllll!!!!!!!! Except Liam appears to be worried/ upset that he’s not got enough, and some of his Tory backbench fans agree.
A week after rightly announcing plans to enshrine the nation’s commitments to our troops in law the government has hinted at plans to also enshrine in law our commitment to spend 0.7% of national GDP on Overseas Aid. No that’s not a typo, zero point seven percent, in case you’re struggling, yes less than one percent. But Liam and co are not happy about this, I know what you’re thinking “good on him, yeah we should give more than 0.7% to those so MUCH less fortunate than ourselves”. Nah Comrade, Liam wants to give less!
What a struggle for the world’s 5th richest country to give less than 1% of its GDP to those living on like £2 a day!
I heard a Tory MP on the radio yesterday basically say (and I am paraphrasing with tongue firmly in cheek here, I know how unlike me), “It’s a disgrace to be committing more money to children dying in Africa when we can’t afford enough Aircraft carriers to blow up people in the Middle East”. The tough reality of the credit crunch ey?! After all we are all in this together, some of us lose the annual holiday, others cut back on the car journeys and some of us have to make do with a couple of less jet fighters to bomb other nations with.
Life’s just not fair.
Fox’s thinking shows at best a lack of thought, at worst some deeper hidden agenda (do do, do do, do do). Perhaps if we spent MORE on doing nice stuff abroad (my definition for what the Overseas Aid budget does) and LESS on shooting and invading we wouldn’t need to do so much defending in the first place. Make Love Not War and all that. Surely if we sent a load of cuddly toys, all-ya-can-eat Pick’n’Mix and maybe some Playstations into the most ‘Talebanised’ towns and villages across Afganisatan and Pakistan they’d start to like us a bit more. At the very least they could take our their angst on Call of Duty 4 rather than the Queens Fusilier Watsits.
It seems so clear I can’t help but wonder what I am missing? Send playstations, get back big smiley faces. Send tanks, get back unhappy faces and an A47 up ya arse.
What am I missing???????
Vlr
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