Sweet Charity

When I was growing up it was all about Africa. Every other Blue Peter appeal to our generous, privileged, juvenile, western sensibilities was about a famine in some god-forsaken semi-desert hellhole. Pictures of the bloated bellies of malnourished infants from Biafra then Sahel then Ethiopia were broadcast to play on heartstrings, with the intention of capturing sympathy and pocket money. Parents berated English kids for not eating their greens with the oft-repeated “starving children in Africa would be glad of that broccoli...” I dare say it still happens today.

But sod that, I thought; I might have collected thousands of milk bottle tops to try and buy a guide dog for the blind, or recycled newspapers for some other domestic fund-raiser, but the more I heard about and saw of the situation in Africa, the less I really cared. As Gilbert O’Sullivan sang in 1971 “When I'm drinking my Bonaparte Shandy, eating more than enough apple pies, will I glance at my screen and see real human beings starve to death right in front of my eyes?” Yes, I thought, I very well may. But I’d have had to catch the Six o’clock News and not, like now, have it piped into my head, unbidden, via every conceivable medium, every minute of every day.

I may have been in danger of being converted, but I listened to what I was being told and learned that starving women can’t conceive... and therein lay their salvation. So, what did the do-goody-good west do? We prolonged their misery by feeding them, letting them carry on breeding and increasing their numbers so that the next famine affected far more. And by the time you’ve lived, vicariously, through three or four famines they cease to have any fascination except for the uneasy feeling that it might have been better to have let nature take its course first time round.

I’m pretty sure I’d got to this stage by the time I was around fifteen, at which point playing drums in a rock band took up all my emotional commitment. My pragmatism in deciding to fix my life before meddling in that of others only continued to harden. But here we are, knocking on for half a century later and what has changed? The same old deluded fools in the west, salving their consciences by interfering in other people’s problems, making them worse and then handing down the messy consequences to the next generation for them to deal with.

Back when I was a kid we sent money and maybe some volunteers, but it eventually turned out that the real issues were with them and their environment, their cultures, the way they dealt with their own destinies. It didn’t work. So now the ‘solution’ is to import them, their cultures and the way they deal with things into the west so that, what? So we can hope to dilute their destructive tendencies? Swamp their stupid genes with our gullible ones? From whatever honourable source the motives spring, this river is only ever going to flow in one inevitable direction; downhill. We are building our future society on the shifting sands of a cultural flood plain.

Please give generously - Alms for Islington

One day in the future will Black Blue Peter try and dip into the deep pockets of affluent African children to try and save a dying Europe from famine, war and pestilence? Will a resurgent dark continent once again become the cradle of civilisation and the salvation of the world? I don’t see it somehow, do you? 

Beggar's Banquet

There’s an abnormally strong whiff of envious malcontent in the air and the usual non-sequiturs are doing the rounds:

Boo hoo: the Chinese president rides around London in a golden carriage – why do we tolerate that while there are homeless people in those streets?

Boo hoo: look at that lavishness of that state banquet – how dare people dine like that while some people are nearly starving?

Boo hoo: even though we have no idea what the price of energy will be in the future, how dare the ‘cruel Tory government’ take such expensive steps to secure our fuel needs for the next fifty years? (The absurd counter proposal is that they should invest that money in the entirely uncertain output from wind farms, whose figures are rigged and which make rich landowners richer.)

Meanwhile, in many parts of the world people literally die from starvation, not from going two days without a KFC bargain bucket. Homes by the thousand are swept away by floods and landslides and tsunamis and earthquakes in countries whose governments are powerless to help. Despotic rulers disappear their detractors and whole populations are driven to desperate measures to escape wholesale slaughter. And if you ever see a satellite picture of the earth at night, only the wealthy margins of the populated world have any electricity at all.

But - boo hoo - 2.25 million Londoners are ‘living inpoverty’. Oh, do fuck off; the numbers are meaningless, our measure of poverty is absurd, but underlying it all is a common thread – the cloth of gold called entitlement. From where came the notion that everybody deserves so much? Nobody owes you a living. Nobody even owes you life. But you’re here now and if you spend it all waiting for somebody else to fend for you, you will die disappointed. But if you are fortunate enough to possess all your limbs and your faculties, you might want to consider the pecking order for aid while you’re waiting...

The national cake is only as big as we can bake it – no, Labour, borrowing is not free money, you still have to pay for it. So after covering the costs of roads, schools, hospitals, police, defences, etc whatever is left is all there is to go round. Where do you put yourself on a scale of leukemia sufferer to multiple amputee? Is your home an exposed park bench or a cosy squat? Does an adult with a lifelong mental age of four deserve more help than a life’s-end Alzheimer’s sufferer? Do you think of the children or the cancer ward when you give to charity? Is your new hip more important than her new lungs? Who gets the single donor heart when four are needed?

Look deeper and you can go on and on and on – everybody wants a piece of that last slice of cake – in comparison, how great is your need? Nobody in Britain actually starves except by the direct neglect of others. If you’re concerned about feeding you eleven children did you stop to consider for one moment who was going to have to go without so that you could have what you wanted? What unique and debilitating condition do you possess that makes you so much more deserving than others? Just how much of other people’s money do you think you should have.

Thanks very much... I'll have two quid.

So, it’s a shame for the steel workers and homelessness is a national shame and dear oh dear the bloated NHS still has only days to live. But if you can’t see that we must live within our means and that by lavishly welcoming potential contributors to our national bake off we are spending millions to gain billions your argument for the spending to come your way is somewhat short on logic. My suggestion? Unless you absolutely rely on others for your every living need, the first place you should look for help is in the mirror.