SO NOW YOU KNOW WHERE THE OVERSEAS AID BUDGET IS GOING!

His yacht will cost nearly three times what his country spends on health and education for its impoverished citizens each year.

But Teodorin Obiang is the son of a dictator and the chances are that such considerations won’t unduly trouble him.

He has commissioned a $380million (£233million) super yacht, with cinema, restaurant, bar and swimming pool, it was revealed yesterday.

Because Obiang earns $6,799 (£4,184) a month as agriculture minister of the tiny, oil-rich West African state of Equatorial Guinea, questions are being asked about quite how he could afford the 390ft yacht.

So now you know where you International Aid Budget is going.  As well as going to countries like India, who have space programmes and more nuclear weapons than we have, £13 BILLION, will be going in Aid by 2013.

No one says that people in this country are impoverished like they are in the third world, but we have people sleeping in the streets and pensioners dying of cold every winter.  Maybe a better way of spending the money, would be teaching them about contraception and giving out contraceptive pills and condoms to stop them having huge families that they or their country can't afford.

Who said, "charity begins at home"?

WHY IS THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT GIVING £1M TO PAKISTAN?

IF YOU WANT TO DONATE SEND IT HERE

THE Scottish Government is to make almost £1 million available to Scottish-based organisations helping Pakistan flood victims.  They’re giving emergency funding of £500,000 for humanitarian aid and more than £400,000 of development funding.
External Affairs Minister Fiona Hyslop said, “It’s our moral duty to do whatever is in our power to ease the suffering of the people whose lives have been devastated.  “In providing assistance Scotland is saying it cares.”
A further £415,450 has been allocated to projects in Pakistan this year under the South Asia strand of the Government’s international development programme.

Now don't get me wrong.  I give to charity.  I may or may not have given to this charity, although the site of the Pakistan President over here, lecturing our Prime Minister,  while his country is dealing witht the floods, could get your back up, but that would be down to my personal choice.

But WHY is the Scottish Government giving OUR TAX MONEY to a disaster in Pakistan.. International Aid is as far as I know, is a matter reserved to WESTMINSTER and we are pledged to give 0.7% of GDP to aid which currently amounts to nearly £9billion.  The Scottish Government is about to tell us how bad the cuts are going to have to be, so surely this £1m, could have been used elsewhere, in SCOTLAND.  As my Granny used to say, "CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME" and the Scottish Government would do well to remember that.