In the midst of all the publicity about giving aid to the third world the reason why the third world needs this money is not really given much time.

Lots of answers are being proposed with corruption in the countries themselves being generally excepted and even borderline racist assertions of incompetence . But the reality is that has very little to do with you average citizen of the third world . .

Everytime i see bush or tony bliar boasting about how much aid they are giving i wonder how blind they think we are. It is fairly clear that they are taking more back with the other hand.

• The aid is dwarfed by debt repayments
without these crippling debts the third world would be able to actually start to address its problems. Even worse is that many of these debts where taken out for despotic leaders to fund coups , weapons purchases from the west and corrupt politicans offering corperate incentives. A process exists in the financial system for the writing off of so called 'odious debts' and was developed to cover nazi debts , this can and should be applied to a majority of these debts.A clear message should be sent to fincancial instiutions that lending to opressive regiemes means you wont get government protection and you probably wont get your money back either.


• The aid is often useless or badly distributed
Cases sent to some muslim desert areas by the live aid appeal where said to contain stilleto heals and inappropriate female clothing. It has also been said that lots of the tsunami aid is still sitting in an american warship which recpients understandably don't want anywhere near them.


• Famines rarely effect crops for western export
A majority of food shortages in third world countries could be stopped within a year if the best land was not reserved for western export crops like tobacco, out of season produce and coffee.


• The sums offered are tiny in comparison to war spending
The USA donated to the tsunami appeal the same amount of money as it says it spends on the war in iraq every day and this was only after they where embarrased into doubling it. This money is being used to buy off our conciences . It rarely equals the amount put into propping up the schemes that causing these problems

So next time anywone talks about giving foreign aid , think about what it really means , for me campaigning for a less exploitative foriegn policy and shopping ethically makes more sense than chasing the symptons of the debt disease.