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[bubosquared]

I don't think I need to tell anyone this anymore, and I probably won't be online this weekend anyway, but if I get spoiled for HBP, I'm eating someone's face, capice? Right.

And on the same subject, stupid timing on all parts means that I can't actually pay for my Amazon order until Friday (payday), which means it probably won't get to me by Saturday, argh. So either Sunday, if whatever delivery service they use works on Sunday, or Monday, but obviously not at work, so I'll have to wait even longer. GAH!

Between that, assorted other financial worries, and a whole slew of friendship troubles, my stomach's been aching for days. I've stopped drinking coffee in the hopes that'll help, and also to avoid dehydrating myself even further in this INFERNAL HEATH. This is SCOTLAND, it's not supposed to be HOT! Eeeeevil yellow eye! *hiss, claw*

Random link of the day: Bill and Ted: The Musical. I love the internet.

And now for today's Big Brother babbling. Still squeeing over Craig and Anthony. Eugene still cute, and I got all "Awwww" over his reasons not to vote. He's so adorable! I want to feed him milk and cookies! Derek is growing on me more and more, especially after his recent analysis of the dynamics between the other guys in the house. And Kemal is getting more loveable by the day.

Comments

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

It didn't even get all that much more don for the debt than had already been agreed. :/ I mean, yay for progress, obviously, but I hope both the world leaders and the people who put their voice and name and all behind this campaign realise that this should be a first step, not all they do.

I haven't had to use a fan yet, as somehow the wind always blows right into my open window. I hope it cools down before my family holiday in a few weeks, or there may be fraternicide happening.

[wibbble]

Well, these summits are always the same: the actual work was all done ages ago, and this is just a chance to have a nice dinner and handle the formalities. Without the nice dinner and formalities, though, they wouldn't bother with the actual work.

C4 had a lot of good coverage from Africa over the G8 week, and it was interesting to watch. The people there don't want aid, they want investment - which they're getting from China, strangely enough. China doesn't care if the governments are corrupt or abusive, so they invest money where-ever it makes sense to invest money. There's no political strings attached, which makes them well-liked.

I've actually been wondering if that isn't actually the best plan - what /we/ (the rich countries in the West) should be doing. While there would be opposition to, basically, doing deals with oppressive and corrupt regimes, I think that in the long run it could work out really well.

This kind of investment has a trickle-down effect, the kind of effect that aid rarely has. When you build anything, you're employing local people, using local resources, and that all feeds into the economy. The standard of living for /everyone/ rises, slowly but surely. As it rises the economy grows, and education becomes more important. Public school becomes the norm rather than the exception. The standard of living rises again. Eventually you have a (relatively) wealthy, (relatively) educated population, who are essential for the running of the factories and holiday complexes that the Chinese have sponsored - which means that the corrupt government can't just off them all without losing their backing from the Chinese.

So you'd get more concessions to the population, and less oppression (after all: oppress the people and they'll flee, taking the education you paid for with them, and if you're too stupid to realise that, the Chinese will fund someone to replace you so that their investments aren't put at risk).

Obviously this is a very long term view of things, and I suspect that people here could never get over what would appear to be supporting Bad People In Power, so if this ever happens it'll be because China does it, rather than because of anything /we/ do.


I think the heat in here might be being made worse by the fact that I've got this laptop on my, well, lap. The heat radiating through the keyboard is quite disturbing.

Gah. I need to go Outside today. Is it scary out there?

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

I could live with trying to get the corrupt governements out of power if it was actually "we'll start giving your country aid through you when you start being non-corrupt" rather than "we'll start giving your country aid at all when you start being non-corrupt." I think someone brought that up in one of the C4 programs as well, that giving through NGOs is better because they help the people directly rather than through the governements, where most of the money won't even reach the people that need it. But in terms of long-term development, fair(er) trade and investments are key, yeah, and we got promises for neither of them. :/

Also, what annoys me most about the aid-with-strings is that a lot of the strings involve privatising facilities and such, which is stupid, because hell, even Belgium didn't start privatising a lot of its facilities until the last decade or less, and we're an industrialised nation. Leave off the privatisation until the countries are ready, dammit, instead of trying to force uber-captialism on them! </rant>

Outside is ... somewhat less scary than yeserday. There are some clouds hiding the Daystar from time to time.

[wibbble]

Privatisation didn't even really happen here until Thatcher took control. It's not always the best way to handle things (it killed the coal industry dead, for example, and did bad things to the transport industry... oh, and it was handled really badly in the case of BT, resulting in a near-total monopoly until very recently).

Giving aid to NGOs is definitely the best way to go in dodgy countries, but there's the risk that the local governments just won't allow it (which sounds absurd, but if it's spun correctly it can sound decent to the local population, and effectively blackmails the West into just giving the government the money), or that local wars would make it difficult for outsiders to get in and do good.

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Privatisation didn't even really happen here until Thatcher took control. It's not always the best way to handle things (it killed the coal industry dead, for example, and did bad things to the transport industry... oh, and it was handled really badly in the case of BT, resulting in a near-total monopoly until very recently).

Heh, and don't forget the trains. :D Yeah, there were a bunch of hiccups in Belgium as well, which just adds to my wondering why, exactly, the West is so keen to force the Third World to privatise NOWNOWNOW.

which sounds absurd

Oh, I believe it, heh. (I don't know if I ever told you about how my parents, when they were just married, were supposed to go to Indonesia for six years to do develeopment work, and ended up having to come back after two weeks because the programme they were going to be part of got cancelled by the goverment. So yeah, I definitely believe it.)