by Jonny | Feb 5, 2012 | Updates
India, a country which spends £20 billion on its defence programmes and over £1 billion on a space programme while its population starves.
There isn’t really more I can say about this. Just the above justifies not giving them any aid, especially so when the UK at the moment is facing hard economic times along with the rest of Europe.
However, if a country can afford a space programme, a large military budget, that in my eyes is enough to stop the majority of aid to that country. In the end, that extra £1 billion being used by the Department for International Development Agency is being used inevertedly as it means India themselves don’t have to spend as much on helping their population. – Whether or not India considers the amount as “peanuts”.
People will say that the £1 billion in aid is to “bribe” and to buy favour in terms of relations with India and the UK; however in my opinion that isn’t the way to conduct bilateral trade. If a country has something which meets the requirements of another country, that country should buy products because it suites and works for them, not because that country is giving them aid.
What’s worse, is that you have India, a country which receives aid, is also giving aid to others. It doesn’t make sense. Stop the aid and if they want to trade with us, we shouldn’t be bribing them. Until we can focus on a clearer economic strategy which works (Within the EU as well) then there is no point pouring money down a drain where it’s needed elsewhere.
I have nothing against Indian people, but their government for not doing more to help their people. They have a thriving economy, yet they think it is more sensible to build up their military. Now of course, coming from a UK standpoint, we also had a thriving economy (Although receding a little; however expect a bounce-back once the ‘EU issue’ has cleared itself up) and we spend double the amount on our armed services.
This is what we don’t have:
- People starving
- People who cannot find education when needed
- People who do not have proper toiletry or actual toilet facilities
These 3 points alone could be the definition or reasoning behind giving aid to India, as they have these problems still prevalent in their society and it is a huge issue. However, the job now should be left to India to help its own people. That is not to say the Indian government aren’t helping its people now, but now they are in a more suitable position to help their population and have the resources to do so if they so wish. Others shouldn’t be doing it for them when they are perfectly capable of doing it themselves.
The facts
- The N.C. Saxena Committee report states that 50% of Indians live below the poverty line. (Source)
- India has more people in poverty than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. (Source)
- 42.5% of the children in India suffer from malnutrition. (Source)
- India has the highest amount of underweight children in the world. (Source)
- 58% of children under five surveyed were stunted. (Source)
This is not to say that the Indian government aren’t doing anything, however efforts to combat this, just don’t seem to parallel with their growth. Tackling poverty is a hard issue and isn’t simple cut, I’ll admit, but I can’t find it in me why any country would want to give aid to a country which its own government doesn’t put enough weight behind to tackle the enormous amount of poverty that exists there.
Now, I understand they have to spend money on other things in order to bring in trade, business etc, which they have done a fantastic job on. However, you sometimes wonder whether or not India is actually making an effort to bring people out of poverty when countries are still giving aid.
Right now, India’s economy is doing fantastically. Perhaps, it is time that aid be cut off and be directed towards other interests which actually help further development of other countries. Even an Indian MP has stated that the UK contribution is “peanuts”, so why should we be giving peanuts to a country, which already has a lot of peanuts! :p
Let’s give more to help the development of the countries in Africa if anything, they need the money more than India which has a booming economy and will take over the UK’s economy in years to come.
by Jonny | Jan 27, 2012 | Updates
They call me Picasso. Who are they exactly? I don’t know. 😀
by Jonny | Jan 26, 2012 | Updates
If you have been reading my blog, which likely isn’t the case, you’ll have read that I went back to my parents place for Chinese New Year/Lunar New Year. I took a few pictures here and there, and they were large files which meant they needed compressing before I could upload them to my blog. I looked at a few software’s and most if not all I came across either placed a watermark on your image (As it was the free version of that particular software I downloaded) or you had to compress files, one by one; a timely process if you have lots of images. I have my laptop, on which I had already installed a software before-hand called “Fast Stone Image Viewer“.
As you can see from the image above, there are lots of options and this may look complicated, especially if you are only looking for a simple image compressor to compress your large files. However this gives you lots of options. For example, as you can see in the image above, you can add a border to give off a nice effect around the image itself.
You can also see me highlighting with my cursor on the “Batch Covert” option in tools, once you have highlighted the images in the Fast Stone Image Viewer browser. Simply click that and you’ll be brought to this part of the program:
From the above image, you can see that it has all the images listed on the right hand side. You can make additional changes, such as adding a border, changing the names of the files etc in batch and generally selecting the best options which you want personally. This tool is very handy. It has compressed my images from around the size of 3-4mb to 1mb. (While keeping a very high resolution of over 2xxx by 2xxx) You can of course make the resolution smaller, which will significantly cut down the size of the file, while seeing no reduction in quality.
Best thing of all about this software? It is free. When I mean free, it isn’t that bullshit, which comes with Ad-ware or you do not get messages popping up all the time suggesting you to buy the “pro version”. This is totally freeware. Although they do sell a version which you can buy, you really don’t need it, if the above is all your are looking for.
You can download the software on their website here: http://www.faststone.org/
by Jonny | Jan 25, 2012 | Updates
How Google started and the amount of users on the web. (Interactive)
Created By Online PhD
by Jonny | Jan 25, 2012 | Updates
I’m becoming very lazy when it comes to blogging.
I have two websites which operate on the basis of blog type posts and they take a long time to make. I have to research about a subject, find reliable sources and then create an article out of them; either debating pro’s and con’s etc. Especially so for my Armoured Vehicle website. I’ve also been really lazy with my FactsonSpace website. Although my armoured vehicle website has seen increases in traffic, I haven’t really done anything for my FactsonSpace site, other than this week, I created a forum for it here. However that isn’t finished yet.
I need to look at ways of advertising my FactsonSpace website since I believe that is the real money maker out of all my websites. Considering its future potential and that space is a limitless subject which is highly interesting. But I’m no expert, so perhaps when I get my cheque from Google I’ll hire a writer to help me out there. I can see that website going big if directed well; which at current I’m not doing too well at.
by Jonny | Jan 25, 2012 | Updates
In light of Chinese New Year/Lunar New year, I changed the design of this website to something different. I was getting tired/bored of the old design; it had a few issues.
Plus, with this design I am able to do more – in terms of back-end changes and I think it looks better – all in all.
Old design:
New design:
Although when I look back at these screenshot’s, the first doesn’t look too bad; if I am honest. However I like change especially this change, I feel my website looks more modern.
New logo:
The sub-logo or slogan says “Welcome to my life!” in Mandarin. I feel the language looks visually beautiful, so I used Mandarin for this reason.
Although most of this blog is in English, hopefully if anyone asks about what it means, they would have either of read this or they can alternatively just ask me. : ) Though I doubt many people read my blog anyway. 😛
