Make Poverty History

[Devlin]

choose:

1) http://www.tshirthell.com/store/product ... ductid=487

2) http://www.live8live.com

[VidX]

Trying to listen to it online but the speakers on these work machines are a wee bit pants :s

[Lairiodd]

Is this a bad thread to point out that clearing debts sends a bad signal to more responsible counties ? If they *have* to wipe out debts, it should be a percentage depending on how much you owe/how poor the country is. The current clear 100% of debt for a small number of counties is very unfair to countries who have paid back some of their debt (imagine if your country just barely missed the cut-off). Also, it will reduce the ability for those countries to get loans from private institutions.

PS (OT ), Usp do you manually change your sig every day ?

[VidX]

Is this a bad thread to point out that clearing debts sends a bad signal to more responsible counties ? If they *have* to wipe out debts, it should be a percentage depending on how much you owe/how poor the country is. The current clear 100% of debt for a small number of counties is very unfair to countries who have paid back some of their debt (imagine if your country just barely missed the cut-off). Also, it will reduce the ability for those countries to get loans from private institutions.

PS (OT ), Usp do you manually change your sig every day ?

Aye

(To the sig thing that is)

[Xest]

Biggest problem about the whole live8 thing is that throwing money at the problem alone doesn't solve it, clearing debt is a good start but what's really needed is action to bring down or at least neutralise the troublesome regimes. The problem then is that as soon as you send troops in, the same people who were campaigning to help the countries whine about how we're sending troops in. Whilst there's a whole lot of good intentions, the makepovertyhistory and live8 stuff is just surrounded by masses of people who don't understand the full depth of the problem and don't realise that far more than clearing debt and sending money is needed. There's countless evidence demonstrating that money is often lost, goes towards helping fund more arms and such for the regimes causing the problems and the food bought with the money is also often stolen.

It's not even that I personally condone war, but the question that has to be asked is are we going to help Africa? If the answer is yes then people need to accept that there's no way of doing it without there being some loss of life or bloodshed before the eventual calm.

Either way, whatever happens we can't keep pouring money in when a lot of the time it's just making the problem even worse as it gets into the wrong hands and dare I say, despite the bands making no profit from the live8 concert I can't help but feel the music industry sitting laughing at how much extra free advertising this has got them - after all, if that weren't the case you'd be seeing bands from the African people themselves and such mixed in there when in fact the African bands have been shoved in a tiny little area out of the way.

[Satyn]

I dont like it but i have to agree a little with you Xest but not all the way tho.

Imo its a great thing they are doing but I dont think it will solve anything and will only be free advertising for the artists involved. Not that i'm saying they dont have their heart in the right place but I think everything is very well thought of.

Africa shouldnt have debts aye ... and giving them money isnt an option either. Like you said it usually falls in the wrong hands either. Think Tsunami 1212 is a very good example from that. Loads of money been collected and loads of it vanished aswell

We can only try and make this a better place but how depressing it is I dont think much will change.

[Tare]

makepovertyhistory and live8 are not the answer to ending poverty, everyone will realise that.
The real thing we'll gain from such events is the fact that now people are aware about it. 2 billion people were able to witness what happened tonight, 2 billion people understood that something had to be done.
Even the fact that we're discussing this right now is a win for the cause. Last week we were talking about Tim Henmans loss on Wimbledon, now we're talking about how to make the world a better place.

It is a long road and we may not have all the answers, but we cannot afford not to start going down this road.

Like they said:
Your grandparents were remembered for ending the second world war.
Your parents were remembered for limiting the nuclear weapons.
Let's be the generation that tries to end poverty.

[Lieva]

tbh

only thing that can change the state of africa is when their goverment stops using money to fund war and starts actually feeding their people.
However i dont know how we could actually change this

Liveaid and oxfam have done alot for africa though so it is good these things happen. Thousands of people who would have died have survived cause of peeps like this

[Lieva]

edited title thread
i know when i looked at it i thought MPH ment miles per hour however its confused more intelligent then i as well

[Lairiodd]

What they really should do is not stop more government loans to those countries (sell the debt to the private sector). Private banks loaning money is fine ... they will automatically factor in the risk (you are a dictator ... well you have to pay 20% interest, if the government is more stable, they get a lower interest rate). This creates an incentive for stabilising your government. This means that even if you stablise your govenment, you don't get any reduction in the interest rate.

However, governments can use things like trade embargos (which have nothing to do with debt collection and which private banks have less access to) to force countries to pay back their loans.