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.
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I know somebody I’m going to quote a couple of those stats to. Nothing else gets through but maybe,just maybe this will.
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.