Stop Starvation .... with Books! And defuse Nick Griffin as well.

One reason to call for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan is that the war is costing the British taxpayer too much money. How much did the invasion of Iraq cost us? We are not told. Once war is declared the money needed to fight the war is ring-fenced. Generals, quite rightly, ask for the soldiers and equipment they need to “do the job.” We, the taxpayers, are never allowed to decide whether we want to blow all that money away in explosions, never allowed to say we would rather spend our money on something else.

Politicians are, by definition, ring-fenced. Our system means we have a Minister of Defence, whose remit is to extract as much money as possible from the Treasury to spend on soldiers, armaments, etc. Similarly with all the other ministers. We, as normal human beings, know we have a certain amount of cash, some of which we have to spend on food, heating, mortgage, etc, and some which we spend on various activities. If one activity costs too much, we give it up.

We might well find ourselves in the position of wanting, but not being able to afford, a New Year holiday in Barbados. But instead, we might go for a springtime cycling holiday in Cornwall. Government spending is allocated in such a way that once the decision is taken to go to Barbados, there is no procedure for changing to a Cornish cycling trip.

If the British government cut its large expenditure on war and armaments, there would be plenty of money left for cycling trip expenditure which might actually achieve more than war.

It is. however, necessary to use the cliché, and think ‘out of the box.’ Last night on BBC Question Time www.bbc.co.uk/questiontime/,Nick Griffin www.bnp.org.uk was one of the guests. Hedged around with shifts of language, we nevertheless gather that the British National Party wishes to drive non-white people out of Britain.

We all know that Europe is being infiltrated in vast numbers by immigrants from Asia and Africa; why? Because their own countries offer them little hope of improving their lives.

Do we approve of immigration? And if so, how much? Well, we can, and should, discuss that. But surely everyone must approve of abolishing poverty in Third World countries.

One reason why life in Third World countries is getting worse and worse rapidly is because the population is rising. Now it is no use us telling an African family to have fewer children. With no welfare, no pensions, etc, the African couple will have six, seven, eight, children in order that some of the children will survive to look after their parents in old age.

But there is a simple solution, tried and tested.

Simple does not mean easy.

In the 1980’s the United Nations predicted world population would rise to 12 billion, which is far more than Planet Earth can support. But, mercifully, this prediction has now been revised, and the forecast is now a bit under 9 billion round 2040 (which is still far more than Planet Earth can support).

But why the revision of 3 billion less?

In 1989, the state of Kerala, in south India, was one of the poorest parts of the world. The average daily earning was 89 cents. A Brazilian educator Paulo Freire www.ptoweb.org/freire.html sexyracy.blogspot.com taught that education should be about the basic problems of living. Kerala started a state-wide campaign to teach people to read, with reading material which discussed hunger, poverty, safe drinking water, etc. Singers travelled the state encouraging participation. A slogan was shouted “Kerala reading, Kerala beautiful”. There were reading classes in the fields, on the shore, in cowsheds.

By 2000, Kerala literacy was nearly equivalent to that in the First World.

And, and, and … the women were literate, and the birthrate has declined to 18 births per thousand per year, while in much of Africa it is over 60 per thousand.

In the 1980’s, in many of the poorest countries, only about 3 % of women could read. Where women have learnt to read, the birthrate drops.

It costs much less to teach people to read, than it does to drop bombs on them.

The solution is simple; not easy; in a way very complicated; but simple: we need to set the cost of the Afghan war against the cost of sending books and teachers to poor countries; we need to take into account the fact that if we do spend the money on books not bombs, we may start to stop the reason for the British National Party’s existence.

That is a simple solution.

Stop starvation … with books.

I I obtained some of these figures from The Meaning of the 21st Century, www.21school.oz.ac.uk/ by James Martin,www.campaign.ox.ac.uk/