recent UK funding of World Food Programme

In recent years, the United Kingdom has been the third biggest contributor to the World Food Programme, after America and Germany. However, in July, the UK ranked seventh, having given less than Norway (pop. 5.5m).

paradigm-shift

www.famine-relief.com is now up, as a focus for this work. Since starting this project in earnest, I have read quite a lot on the web about famine-relief and subscribe to several useful mailing-lists on the subject. There is truly heroic work going on, notably by the WFP. Other key sources are the UK's Bond organisation and World Humanitarian Forum.

These fine organisations and their counterparts are understandably concerned with such matters as:

• the horror of famine
• the logistics of getting food to the starving
• the desperate need to raise funds for food and transportation.

If you read those NGOs' material for too long, it's easy (I've found) to become overwhelmed by the scale and the horrendous detail of this long-running global epidemic (whose death-toll makes covid seem short-lived and mild).

My focus is going to be the need for a paradigm-shift that somehow majorly transforms this situation such that it is unrecognisably better in just a short time. Such a change could come from science and/or technology, or maybe from economics and/or politics. It could be comparable with the attitudinal shift that has taken place in recent decades to environmental matters, where people and governments have started to take climate-change seriously.

This is what we seek: a paradigm shift on famine.

c'est bon mais ce n'est pas le famine-relief

We're being distracted from famine by other issues.

Covid hasn't derailed the global cavalcade of aid-related conferences and reports. The meetings may have shifted online, but the PowerPoints are also up there, along with the glossy PDF brochures. Like major sporting-events, reviews dated 2020 have only appeared this year and the message of human deprivation is all the gloomier for the pandemic's direct effect on the health of the poor, as well as its indirect impact on the public finances. Britain's brutal aid-cut, bravely resisted in parliament by inter alia a former prime minister, is tragically supported by more than 70% of the UK's population.

The World Humanitarian Forum has produced 211 pages on its global review and the UK's Bond group offers 28 pages on what the UK can do. Meanwhile, the British House of Commons' International Development Committee continues to deliberate. Although famine is a massive and urgent problem, discussion of it seems to me to have become mired in the consideration of all sorts of other important but separate issues, including:

• climate
• culture
• decolonisation
• rights
• trade
• corruption
• education
• gender
• conflict
• democracy
• exploitation
• migration.

While it is true that some or all of these matters are important, and some or all of them may contribute to world poverty, national and international discussion seems to be more concerned with ticking the right boxes for current concerns among western politicians and media than with getting food and water to dying people as soon as possible. If a house is on fire you don't stop to assess the diversity of the trapped occupants or of the firefighters; you send in whomever you have to rescue whomever they can.

I think aid needs to get back to basics - helping those in urgent need. You can help now but there's also a role for lobbying governments to concentrate on meeting the basic requirements of the world's 0.7bn destitute people.

shortfall in UN's food-aid budget = 0.3% of what the world spends on alcoholic drink

As I write this and as you read this, someone is starving. Indeed, many people are starving. Arguably, almost 0.7bn people are starving.

Some of us live in countries where there is little or no starvation, so the problem isn't evident to us. Imagine, though, if someone who badly needed food was right in front of you and you had the means to help them. It would be difficult to resist the desire to do something. Imagine you were eating a large meal while being watched by people who have scarcely anything to eat. It would be impossible to continue eating. Yet distance is all that separates those of us who have more than enough to eat from starving people.

Such distances have come to matter less than they used to, beginning with sea-travel, radio and television, then airliners and now the internet. And, of course, these people always were our fellow human beings, regardless of the distance which separated us. The humanitarian urge significantly predates distance-shrinking technology. Many religions and cultures include almsgiving as a spiritual and social duty. The abolition of poverty isn't just an act of charity but can conduce to social order.

The World Food Programme reports that: "Conflict is driving hunger in nearly all the world’s main food crises. War leads to greater food insecurity. And, in its turn, food insecurity increases the chances of unrest and violence." Thus, conflict resolution is an indirect way of solving the problem of poverty. Just as the UN's poverty-reduction goal was met five years early, the world has also become a more peaceful place. So the trend is good (even though covid has set things back).

What will not go away, however, is the reality of the hundreds of millions who are starving right now. These are the people who are metaphorically sitting across from you at your well-stocked dinner-table. In 2020, the World Food Programme raised $8.4bn, but it needed another $5.3bn, less than a 10th of the $67bn that people spent gambling online. Plainly, to many in the developed world, feeding the starving isn't a priority.

People with enough to eat can successfully argue that their money is theirs to do with what they choose. Also, they are not the cause of poverty and, anyway, their taxes are used by governments to send aid overseas. Furthermore, it is widely believed that some of that aid does not even reach the poor. Forbes has reported a World Bank survey which found that significant amounts of aid money ended up in tax havens. Considerable amounts of UK aid money are tied to social, cultural and political objectives which may not be principally about relieving abject poverty but, rather, placating political lobbies in the donor nations. The Guardian has reported: "Too much of Britain’s aid budget is being spent poorly by Whitehall departments on projects that fail the test of reducing poverty in the world’s poorest countries, [The ONE Group] has said."

United Kingdom aid is scrutinised by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. In a 2019 review of five years' activity, the commission concluded: "UK aid has shown it can deliver in the midst of conflict, in some of the world’s most challenging contexts, giving the UK more flexibility to pursue its objectives and enhance its leadership role in the international response to crises. However, UK aid does not yet have a convincing approach to addressing the long-term drivers of conflict and fragility."

What is one to conclude? Like every human undertaking, famine relief isn't a perfect system; it is open to corruption and human error. One would have to be very cynical, though, to believe that all emergency aid went missing. It is probable that most of it does alleviate suffering. For the current year, the World Food Programme says it needs $12.3bn, yet it expects only to receive $7.4bn (60%). Although government-budgets are understandably stressed because of covid, this missing $5bn is trivial when compared to what mankind might spend this year on gambling (see above), confectionery ($210bn) or alcoholic drinks ($1,640bn). The WFP's projected shortfall is thus equivalent to 0.3% of the world's booze market.

Can we do something about that?

the biggest issue

For some months now I've been reading, blogging and tweeting about food-poverty and, believe me, it's a grim watch to be on. Although the UN's millennium goal on poverty was met five years early, there are still perhaps 0.8bn people who are desperately poor, probably more since covid struck.

It strikes me that, for as long as any of our fellow-humans is starving, pretty well all human activity (apart from famine-relief itself) should take a lower priority. So much of what we do, particularly in the realm of leisure, entertainment and luxury, seems to be in appallingly bad taste for as long as the money we spend could be put to indubitably better use. I don't mean this censoriously, including myself among the guilty rich!

While personal donations have a noble role to play, they are a drop in the ocean when compared with the immense giving-power of governments. It is particularly tragic that the British government is cutting aid from 0.7% to 0.5% of grossnational income, and, worse, 72% of voters agree with them (some wanting it cut to 0%). Although the World Food Programme gets some $8bn a year, it just scratches the surface.

I fear we're all in for a drubbing at judgement-day if we can't say that we've properly addressed the matter and moderated our enjoyments in order to do so. It's not enough to say that poverty is caused by politics and war and/or that some aid goes astray. There are sure-fire ways of ensuring that the hungry are fed and, if they were right in front of us, we'd probably do something.

If you want to do something yourself now, please give to the World Food Programme through my justgiving appeal. Politically, please do all you can to persuade G7 and other nations to sustain and increase their giving. In the UK, the aid budget goes through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office who are scrutinised by the relevant House of Commons committee. Lobbyists in this area are Bond. Start a dialogue on aid with your deputy, senator, TD or MP.

covid-denial

Some people I know, many of them intelligent, devout and kind, object to the measures that governments have taken to stop the spread of covid. What I have to ask them is whether they object to the measures because:

• such measures are intrinsically unjust, however bad the disease
• covid isn't a serious enough disease to warrant such measures?

If they hold the first position, they would presumably agree with the statement that deaths caused by a serious infection are acceptable because the right to go out and socialise is more important. If they hold the second position, they would presumably support measures such as those that have been taken with covid if they believed that a particular disease actually was dangerous.

I would want to ask those who supported unrestricted circulation in time of plague whether they really mean that! I'd want to ask those who say covid isn't dangerous to produce peer-reviewed scientific papers to prove it; theories about freemasons and reptiles just aren't enough.

never had it so good

OECD countries account for some 1.3bn people (17% of the world's population) but around half of global GDP. Around 10% of the world's population live in extreme poverty, and the UN hopes to cut that to just three percent by 2030. As I write this and you read this, some of our fellow-human beings are starving to death. Not all of these people are beyond the reach of aid-agencies, among which the World Food Programme is pre-eminent. From our computers and smartphones, we can do something right now to feed the starving.

The suffering of those in poor countries contrasts with the luxury enjoyed by people in rich countries. The worldwide gambling-industry is estimated to be worth more than $66bn, compared with $8.5bn given to the WFP last year. The challenge is to get people into the habit of giving to famine relief. Research suggests giving to charity makes you feel good.

the book of life

Check your spam folder (or even your inbox) and you'll see a tsunami of emails from coaches, gurus and prophets, all of them offering advice on everything from getting up in the morning to becoming a billionaire, by way of walking on coals. Some of this advice is offered in exchange for money, to which I have no objection; some is there for the taking. This whole area of advice-giving runs all the way from sacred texts and worthy Victorian self-help books to assertively-expressed life-coaching, meditative practices, therapeutic interventions and collective therapies such as the 12 steps for overcoming addiction.

The advice isn't always consistent. Some teachers advocate emptying the mind, others filling it with good things. The same guru could one minute be telling you to be grateful for your current situation and the next minute telling you to make bold changes to your life. Credibility can be a problem. We can be told that we are entirely responsible for what has happened to us and/or that we can do anything we set our minds to. This advice must ring hollow with innocent victims of others' misdeeds and those who (like most people) have some limitations on their physical or mental capacity. Is it actually all worthless hype, or are there some verifiable techniques for leading a good life? And what is such a life like?

living spiritual lives

The Sunday-Mass readings this weekend include these words from Romans 8: "[T]here is no necessity for us to obey our unspiritual selves or to live unspiritual lives." The material world matters a lot. We can't neglect the everyday and claim that we are living well. However, we need to see this world through supernatural eyes. We need to decide what matters in spiritual terms, and then implement those priorities in the tangible world. As we put those transcendentally-determined plans into action, we should also judge them by eternal (not temporal) standards. I may win in the world yet lose in heaven; I may fail here on earth, yet gain a celestial crown.

swings and roundabouts

The British electorate swings to the right and, in the media’s view at least, the Conservatives finally look electable. But not so fast say I and Mr Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail. In his blog, the latter warns that the left-leaning media are only prepared to make Mr Cameron look credible because he’s adopted their policies. Things won’t change, he warns, and I’m minded of my own blog (presently de-published by my esteemed hosting-company) which said that British voters were liberal democrats who just didn’t vote Liberal Democrat.

Depressingly, Mr Hitchens gives us his take on the transition from Major to Blair: “And when it was all over, the Government was almost exactly the same – high taxes, slovenly services, hundreds of thousands of people in baseball caps living off the State, feeble police and courts, mass immigration. You know the sort of thing.” We do indeed, and he predicts more of the same if the Tories win in or before 2010.

My “not so fast” is broader. Exciting and interesting though a change from Ken to Boris may be, fundamental problems will persist. England, from being a holy nation in the early 16th century, has become secularised, a bastard-heir to its Christian tradition, charging admission-fees to its despoiled cathedrals and abbeys. Marriage is a wreck and genteel behaviour mocked. The nation fixates on self-harming celebrities from TV, sport and music, drinks itself silly, and increasingly disregards just laws and regulations.

Most of us who work do so for others and not ourselves, let alone on our own land. The property we occupy may be rented or bought at usurious interest. Just a few people own most of the nation’s wealth, parallelling the global situation. Our savings are eroded by inflation and the state takes and controls a huge share of the nation’s wealth. When we do encounter government’s attempt to provide us with a service, we experience bad staff-attitudes, unionisation, rationing of those services, lateness, budget-overrun and just plain bad quality. (I include the railways in that category because, while the motive may now be commercial, sometimes monopolistic, the ethos is statist.)

We are involved in dirty wars overseas which do not relate to our territorial security but, rather, to trade-driven geopolitics. They make us hated and, as if that weren’t bad enough, we seem actually to be losing those conflicts. National policy is effectively surrendered to Brussels and Washington, our highest courts for at least some cases are overseas, and, while we have enough nuclear weapons to commit major war-crimes, we still need someone in the Pentagon to give us the scratchcard with the launch-codes on.

Just because globalisation exists doesn’t mean we need to succumb to it, any more than the existence of malaria means you don’t bother with mosquito-nets or vaccines.

Sadly, the malaise runs deep, and at least some of it is to do with the gathering of much power and property into a few hands. I used to fear that such observations made one a communist, yet, with its doctrine of state-control, that creed is as bad as capitalism. What folks can’t see is that politics, like life, has three dimensions rather than two. Even on a flat sheet of paper you can represent a line which cuts across an otherwise single ideological spectrum (the one from left to right).

We are imprisoned in the view that you must be left, right or centre (even though 21st century centre is way to the left of, for example, 19th century liberalism). You can be state-dominated, trade-dominated, or enjoying some kind of standoff where, as in modern Britain, government provides poor-quality essential services while big business makes billion-pound profits out of the rest (including food which is kinda essential too).

I'm presently considering moving here, but, for now, I'm at http://pauldanon.blog.com/.

HISTORY OF THE WORLD
Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Desert and travelled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants live elsewhere.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinnessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain asked "Am I my brother's son?" Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingreadients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada. Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.
The Greeks were a highly sculptured people and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died of and overdoes of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline. In the Olympic games Greeks ran races, jumped. hurled the biscuits and threw the java.
Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed on in one place for very long. Julius Ceasar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made King. Dying, he gasped out "Tee Hee Brutus". Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonised by Bernard Shaw. Finally Manga Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offence. In midveil time most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literaure. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through and apple while standing on his son's head.
Queen Elizabeth was the Virgin Queen. As queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah". It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenburg invented moveable type and the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a hostorical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcied the world with a 100 foot clipper.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespere. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tradegies, comedies and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are and example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespere was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hotel. The next great author was John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.

During the Renaissance America befan. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Fe. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrims Progress. The winter of 1820 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captin John Smith was responsible for this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea...
Also, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxies. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contenter Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independance. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared 'A horse divided upon itself cannot stand'. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic security. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms. Abraham Lincon became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin, which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theature and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assasinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a resonable time. Voltaire invented elevtricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compostitions and had a large number of children. In bettween he practised on and old spinster which he kept in the attic. Back died from 1850 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf that he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827, and later died for this.
The French Revoulution was accomplished before it was happened and cataputled into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted and heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't have any children.
Queen Victoria was the longest Queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practised virtue. Her death was a final even which ended her reign.
Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Dawin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
The First World War. caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

People are possessive of their writing-style and it may be impossible to convince them that it can be improved, let alone persuade them to do so. It may be, however, that good style can be taught to children. It may already be being taught or, alternatively, schools may only teach correctness.