Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty
A day late but not too late to write a post to participate in blog action day 2008.
The book I am reading at the moment is yet another on the now familiar and alluring theme of family self-sufficiency. ‘Living the Good Life: Changing the world from your own backyard‘ is Linda Cockburn’s diary of her young family’s pledge to spend 6 months not spending a dollar. It naturally includes several examinations as to why shunning of ‘normal’ consumerist lifestyle is a good exercise including the following shocking list on ‘Consumerism versus Humanitarianism’
Consider the priorities in global spending in 1998
Global Priority (US$ billions)
- Basic education for everybody in the world (US$6 billion)
- Cosmetics in the United States ((US$8 billion)
- Water and sanitation for everyone in the world (US$9 billion)
- Ice-cream in Europe (US$11 billion)
- Reproductive health for all women in the world (US$12 billion)
- Perfumes in Europe and the United States (US$12 billion)
- Basic heath and nutrition for everyone in the world (US$13 billion)
- Pet foods in Europe and the United States (US$17 billion)
- Business entertainment in Japan (US$35 billion)
- Cigarettes in Europe (US$50 billion)
- Alcoholic drinks in Europe (US$105 billion)
- Narcotic drugs in the world (US$400 billion)
- Military spending in the world (US$780 billion)
Appalling statistics.
This blogpost was written as a contribution to Blog Action Day. More than 9,000 bloggers worldwide have joined together to raise awareness of poverty and the issues related to it.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:51 am
I know somebody I’m going to quote a couple of those stats to. Nothing else gets through but maybe, just maybe this will.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:59 am
They are quite incredible aren’t they. It makes me feel annoyed that so many people in this country think it is their basic human right to have £200 shoes, multiple foreign holidays, revamped house interiors every five minutes and yet there are many many hundreds of thousands of people trying to get by in their life without a hope.