Given that the death toll is approaching ten times that of Sept 11, I look forward to seeing Bush's 'War on Water'. Maybe if one-tenth of the Iraq war budget was spent on improved infrastructure & early warning systems, the death toll for future tsunamis could be dramatically reduced.
With a multitude of charities now appealing for help, which one(s) do you (all contibutors) think is most worthwhile ie nearly all of what you actually give gets to where it is needed and is spent appropriately?
Geegee, I am considering the same myself. It's always hard to tell, as so many of them are admin heavy, which makes you wonder what proportion of a contribution would make it there.
Wouldn't it be nice if some of our tax contributions went that way (Asia relief), as opposed to this way [broken link removed] ?
It would be very nice if we didn't have to pay for security. But we do. We have an expensive police force and prison service to protect us from criminal elements. The tone of this thread would seem to blame us, the decent citizens, for requiring such security expenditure. In my simple value system I blame the criminal element in our society for necessitating this waste of resources.
So who is to blame for requiring €8M to be spent on protecting GWB from the lunatic anti american fringe in our midst?
My own view is that the Red Cross is probably the best for this type of disaster. I am going to Concern to-day to give a donation and fill in a tax form so that they can claim tax back on my donation.
Hi Madonna, by no means was I trying to set the tone you mentioned. I was pointing to the obvious hypocrisy of there being a humanitarian (humanitarian was also their basis for the Iraq invasion) scenario of biblical proportions developing, and our so called world-leaders were reacting (albeit after 4 days), with pittance donations/pledges. In my view they would have been better off not mentioning the amount they were considering donating, as the figures amounted to an insult. Irelands Government (our) pledge is tiny compared to the amount spent on the GWB visit.
"So who is to blame for requiring �8M to be spent on protecting GWB from the lunatic anti american fringe in our midst?"
I think you are labouring under a misapprehension:
We wouldn't require €8M to be spent on security if GWB had conducted his election campaign outside at home.
So who is to blame for requiring €8M to be spent on protecting GWB from the lunatic anti american fringe in our midst?