Watching the Beeb this morning.. More propaganda regarding the climate change conference.. Mostly about how much we ( the 'rich industrialised lot ) should pay the poor ( underdeveloped ) nations to compensate for enviromental damage... Next scene there is Mugabe spouting off about how we owe them millions..

Funny.. without us they would still be living in mud huts ( many still are ) and the wouldn't have modern medicine, communications, transport or a thousand other things invented by the Europeans and others..

Where is all the 'reperation' money gonna go ? The same place as all the aid money ? Yep straight into so me corrupt officials bank account.. When will the dopey Western politicians get rid of the 'white mans burden' attittude and wake up.. Most of Africa has been declared independent from their colonial masters already.. How about letting them get on with it and discover the meaning of 'independent' Let them invent their own technology or stagnate (as they have been doing for 1000's of years) They aren't ready for it obviously because despite living in a resorce rich continent they still can't make ends meet.. Corruption, nepotism and tribalism will continue to impoverish Africa.. Why is it our problem..

And why is it always the UK (Gordon the moron) who is pushing to send them more cash even thought the UK economy is in the pan ?

Where do the Asian nations stand ? Never heard a word from Thailand or Indonesia.. You only have to see the fumes spewing from old cars and trucks here to realise nobody cares.. Let alone the plastic bags and untreated waste water being emptied into the ocean.. Can you imagine the Thai Govt installing a 'Green Tax' here.. Hardly anybody pays income tax so what chance have they..

Saving the the World thru taxation and throwing good money arfter bad... What a policy...

I have to agree with you. Robert Mugabe took that country back about 300 years but kept all the worst of the modern civilization. On paper, taxes SHOULD work. Unfortunately, crooked, greedy, lazy people seem to rise to the top in all governments the world over and depending on the amount of corruption, skim off the top to a point where there's nothing left to implement the good policies needed to run a modern country.

Here in Thailand you can see many examples of the lack of proper funding for necessary programs. As a non-citizen I can only shrug and feel sad for the local people... or modern thinking businessmen who have to wade through all the bureaucracy and corruption to get something done.

How about letting them get on with it and discover the meaning of 'independent'

They are pretty much unable to, since the West has encouraged a handout mentality with its tens of billions of dollars of aid over the past 40 years.

That is not my unsupported view, by the way -- the Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo (PhD from Oxford) has been saying this for a long time; that Africa needs development money, not aid money, which simply saps the will of the people to get off their a**es.

Her book Dead Aid is a NYT best-seller. But she's having trouble getting Bono and Bob Geldof to listen.

And in the current climate (ha-ha!), there's no way the West is going to start allowing proper development to go ahead in Africa, because that would mean more fossil-fuel burning. Nobody is going to give places like Zimbabwe, Sudan and Somalia access to nuclear technology. Renewable technologies like wind and solar can't deliver the needed power; we're not talking about running transistor radios here, but steel plants, railway networks, factories.

All that Africa might get out of this flatulent COP15 gabfest is more dollops of useless aid, much of which will be stolen.

Edited December 17, 200916 yr by RickBradford

The threat from climate change and the politics of how we are doing to deal with it are different things. The idea that seeing a sleazeball at the conference proves the threat of climate change is a scam is illogical.

Edited December 17, 200916 yr by Jingthing

Its good to see that surly but slowly, global warming is being discredited for the fraud that it is.

The threat from climate change and the politics of how we are doing to deal with it are different things. The idea that seeing a sleazeball at the conference proves the threat of climate change is a scam is illogical.

The case that it is man's activities that is causing climate change is by no means proven, we don't need the likes of Mugabe to demonstrate that.

No, as said the conference is all about how much money the developed countries are going to give the undeveloped countries no to develope themselves. Trebor Ebagum (anag.) suddenly woke up and thought "Jeez I've not been developing my country for years for FREE! . I just gotta get myelf a good place in line for when they start paying me to do it. Of all the world leaders I am the leading expert in non-development so I should get the lion's share of the spondulaks".

The idea that they are going to be able to say to the millions of Chinese and Indians "We know you want a motor car but you can't have one so here's five dollars instead" and these people are going to be happy is laughable in the extreme. Back to the days of passing out shiny beads to the fuzzy wuzzy natives.

There are at least three threads in pub running right now about climate change. Try using one of those

//CLOSED///