[Livia]

Originally Posted by Jesus.H.Christ

I actually give both my time and money to St. Basils and Shelter homeless organisations.

I feel we have a responsibility because of our colonial past, but that isn't my prime reason for believing we should help.

As I've already stated, we should be judged by how we treat those that have the least. I'm aware that India has a space program, but they aren't the only hypocrites in world politics. Why do we have science departments when we also have debt and deficits?

Why is Osbourne looking to ease the burden on our own millionaires in our country by looking to cut our top tax bracket, when we have homelessness and poverty?

I don't think you can equate the poor in India with our own poor. Having been to India a couple of times and seen the squalor for myself, and also seen the opulent, sumputous comfort of some of the more well-off, not the actual wealthy, I think trying to equate our own situation with theirs is not an argument that has legs.

I'm not saying we shouldn't help in a crisis, I know that a lot of people, myself included, donate in a crisis - famine, drought, earthquake etc. - but the ongoing desperate poverty of its own people is something India must try to tackle itself now that its financial position has changed.