A Truce

[500days2do]

An earlier pruner claimed 'rows of C130's at Lyneham...'
That should have read rows of C130's at marshalls awaiting new bits...yet again another huge cock up by our inept leadership. Im sure the press will cotton on soon enough...

Vote with your feet....

[ZH875]

How much of the $44m from the EU is included in the $96m from the UK.

[Rattus]

Why don't we hold Dubya to his promise of "$35 billion"?

It will leave him that much less to squander on future military adventures of dubious legality.

[November4]

From the BBC News

it announced the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Diligence and frigate HMS Chatham were heading to the disaster area, aiming to arrive on Tuesday to help with the relief effort.

International Development Secretary Hilary Benn told BBC News: "There is a reconnaissance team now going to the region and they will advise on where these ships can be best be deployed."

HMS Chatham has Lynx helicopters on board which will be used to transport supplies and an RAF C17 transport plane will be used to help move relief supplies.

So Radio 4 said, the C-17 is being used to transport Engineers to get the airfield at ..... (sorry missed it / can't remember) up and running again so that further relief supplies may be flown in.

[MajorMadMax]

Gee, the US raised its contributions tenfold to $350M and no one here even mentions it? Is it just easier to bash the US for its initial "meager" contribution of $35M? Remember how low the initial casualty numbers were...just a few thousand killed at first, and as the magnitude of the situation became better known the US increased its aid.

I am sure many will still criticize that number as being too low, but considering how many domestic programs could use it, and the amount of foreign aid the US already pays out, I think it is significant. Plus, where are the remarks about Russia and China’s contributions? Are there any? Why are those superpowers excluded from providing any help? What about Germany and some of the other European nations? Are their contributions wrapped up in the EU’s $44M? If so, that is weak as well.

Cheers! M2

[Maple 01]

Pop across to Jet Blast Major, the topic about George Bush's inaguration, I made most of the points you mention there.

[propulike]

From the Washington Post;
"I'm not sure $350 million is the end number," Mr. Powell said. "It's the number that we settled on for now." Well said!

In the meantime, Japan has also increased it's pledge to $500m, Sweden $75.5m, Spain $68m, China $60.5m, Australia $60m, etc etc

The more that is discovered about the extent of the tragedy, the more aid is pledged.

[MajorMadMax]

...for a total of $2B, but the estimated death toll is at 150K.

The American Red Cross received almost $20M in unsolicited contributions in the hours after television pictures brought home the horror of earthquake-driven waves smashing and killing tens of thousands of people.

Catholic Relief Services received more than $1M for its Tsunami Relief Fund before its computers crashed under the hits of contributors. A man who declined to give his name walked into the Atlanta office of CARE USA and laid a $10,000 check on the desk of the receptionist there. The richest Americans, Bill and Melinda Gates, through their foundation, allotted $3M for food, water, shelter and health care.

The money cannot make up for those lost, but hopefully it will help those who survived...

Cheers! M2

[Jackonicko]

Major MM,

$350 m is much better than $35 m. I welcome it, of course. If it's a sign that the US intends stepping up to the plate, and shouldering its fair share of the burden, then "Great Job!"

But if it's meant to be a 'final figure' or a response to the UK's contribution so far, then it's pathetic. 3.5 times more from a country with five times as many people and six times the GDP?

And that would be if we thought that the UK's paltry £50 m was adequate. Never mind the Germans, the Russians and the Chinese. The UK contribution may be high on the list, but it's pretty pathetic.

The UK (with a population of 59,553,800 and 28.44 m people employed, and with a total GDP (purchasing power parity) of $1.666 Trillion and a $746.1 Bn budget spend has committed £50 m to the disaster. That's $96,292,288.90 USD, or a modest $1.62 per head, plus £25 m more by private donations.

If the USA with its population of 295,084,959 wants to match the UK Government spend, per head, it must commit $480,988,483.17. But that takes no account of your greater wealth. It's like two millionaires giving only twice as much as one student.

Despite being better looking, classier, more cultured and more intelligent than you lot (the CIA gives us a 99% literacy rate, and only 97% for the USA) our per capita GDP is only $27,700 - $10,000 behind you chaps. We're a poor country, in other words.

Though you have only the world's third-largest country by size (after Russia and Canada) or by population (after China and India), the USA has the “largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world”, with a per capita GDP of $37,800, a total GDP (Purchasing parity) of $10.99 Trillion and a $2.156 budget spend.

Since your GDP is 6.6 times bigger than ours, you should be allocating $635,529,106.74 to the aid effort, if you want to be making a contribution that is commensurate with your wealth.

This isn't a “UK is better than the USA” provocation, either - tiny Sweden, with it's population of only 8,986,400, has committed £39 m ($75,197,543.20 USD) - that's $8.37 each. To match that on a per capita basis, the USA must commit $2,469,249,527.30.

That's $2.5 Bn, near enough. Anything less than 1/2 Bn makes you meaner than the stingy Brits. Anything less than $2.5 Bn is a pretty sad reflection on a once great power.

And they calculate that £7.5 Bn (about $14 Bn) will be needed, overall. $35 m or $350 m is chicken feed.

[MajorMadMax]

Jackonicko

I understand your math (and that is a compliment on you ) but you are leaving out the rest of the equation, which is how much the US normally spends in foreign aid every year. We can look at it from many angles, from hard numbers to percentage of GDP to amount per capita. Yes, US aid, in terms of percentage of GNP is already the lowest of any industrialized nation in the world, though paradoxically in the last three years, their dollar amount has been the highest. However, even though the charts above do show US aid to be poor (in percentage terms) compared to the rest, the generosity of the people of America is far more impressive than our government. Americans privately give at least $34 billion overseas--more than three times US official foreign aid of $10 billion. And when you consider that our country is not as tax-happy or socialistic as many European countries (or others in the world, for that matter), I think we need to put it all into context that as a nation (and not just our government), the US is one of, if not the most, generous countries in the world. And if I may tack on an editorial comment, we have a lot of domestic needs where this money could easily be applied--education and medical programs--and we probably benefit less so from the aid we give than most countries in the world.

Loads of more fun facts and figures at this web site, where I stole some of the text above.

Cheers! M2

[Beeayeate]

Jacko

Despite the ring of truth in your statements, the logic of you posting in such mind-numbing detail escapes me. Just as it would escape the bereft Sri Lankan hunched under a plastic sheet wondering what the h£ll happened to his world.

Surely international aid is not a competition. Surely the point is to ease the condition of the unfortunate, not to score political points in some inhumanly global game.

Arthur C Clarke is OK though so that's all right.

[Jackonicko]

Good point Beeaye8.

Perhaps it seems poor taste to question such large amounts of money as £50m or $350m. Perhaps it seems unnecessary to point out how little, per capita, these sums represent.

But perhaps it's the only way of demonstrating just how little room for complacency there is.

Our Government (bless it) has committed less than £1.00 from each of us. For many Brits that will be all they give, despite the generosity of others.

The USA, with more than five times our population and more than six times our GDP, is giving a paltry $350 m (£182.3 m).

This is being used in some quarters as justification for all kinds of self congratulation and back-slapping, and I think that it's worth pointing out exactly how stingy our Governments are being.

And I'd still be interested to know how much our two Governments spent on 9/11, Boscastle, and on bombing Afghanistan and Iraq before I start cheering.

[pr00ne]

JN,

Whilst having no issue with you over Iraq and the money spent there, I think you are being rather harsh on both the US and UK Governments over the Asian tragedy.

Money and resources committed to the likes of the 9/11 response, Iraq and Boscastle (what a strange choice as an example BTW) come from existing budgets, after all, the MOD exists to do things like Iraq, distasteful as it was to many, that’s why they are there.
The response to the Tsunami is entirely different, £50M from the UK Govt and the US $350m are huge sums of cash that are being made available NOW, right now, alongside the simply magnificent response of the British public with their £60m pledged to date. Those sums are real and will make a real difference, to compare them with the amount that the US spends in Iraq in any given period is meaningless, they can’t just stop paying it after all.

The worldwide response so far has been magnificent, this is a huge tragedy that puts the so called war on terrorism in to real perspective, it is marvellous to see members of the UK armed forces saying they would much rather go to Asia to help rather than be sent to Iraq, but we all know that is an emotional and sentimental response that, while being laudable, is simply not going to happen.

[MajorMadMax]

Just keeping everybody informed...

U.S. Tsunami Aid May Be Billions of Dollars - Senator

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States may eventually spend billions of dollars to help Asia recover from last week's devastating tsunami, a leading Republican U.S. senator said on Sunday as the Bush administration battled criticism it had been slow to respond.

The $350 million in aid pledged so far by President Bush represents the entire U.S. foreign disaster assistance budget, and Congress will work to pass emergency legislation to go "well beyond" that figure, said Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Lugar, asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether U.S. aid could reach billions of dollars, said "ultimately there could be, given all that is occurring in Indonesia."

An earthquake and subsequent tsunami last Sunday devastated coastal areas in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and as far away as East Africa. The death toll will probably exceed 150,000, and recovery could take five to 10 years and cost billions of dollars, U.N. officials said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell set off on a visit to the region and will participate in an aid-donors' conference in Jakarta on Thursday. He defended the Bush administration against complaints it took too long to comprehend the scale of the crisis or respond with money.

"We have nothing to be embarrassed about. Our response scaled up as the scope of the disaster scaled up," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Bush, who returned to Washington on Sunday from a Christmas break at his Texas ranch, had been following the disaster "very closely from the beginning," Powell told CNN's "Late Edition." As of Sunday, the U.S. military had delivered 430,000 pounds (195,000 kg) of food, supplies and equipment for immediate relief in the tsunami-stricken region, spokesmen for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii said at a briefing.

Some 12,000 U.S. military personnel had been deployed to aid the tsunami relief effort, most of them aboard Navy ships and U.S. ships and aircraft also were ferrying aid from other donors, the spokesmen said.

The Asian disaster caused tens of billions of dollars of damage, and as many as 5 million people may need assistance, U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland told Fox. He told a news conference 1.8 million people now needed food aid.

'ENORMOUS DEVASTATION'

The recovery could take five to 10 years, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. "The devastation is enormous. It will require billions of dollars. Of course, the governments themselves will have to do what they can. But they need international support to be able to do it," Annan said on ABC's "This Week."

So far, countries have pledged $2 billion in assistance, led by Japan's contribution of $500 million. The World Bank's contribution could rise by two to three times the $250 million already offered, bank President James Wolfensohn told ABC.

The U.S. Congress passed $13.6 billion in domestic disaster aid last October, mostly for Florida, a state which was vital to Bush's campaign for reelection and which was struck by four hurricanes. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the U.S. president's brother and a possible candidate to succeed him in 2008, accompanied Powell on the Asia trip.

A possible source of additional U.S. assistance for Asia could be money earmarked for reconstruction in Iraq, lawmakers said. That money has remained unspent due to a violent insurgency.

Powell disputed accusations that the United States had failed to deliver on past aid pledges. "When we pledge an amount, we plan to deliver that amount," he said.

Egeland, who drew a sharp rebuke from Bush last week after he said rich countries had been relatively stingy with foreign aid in the past, said the United States and other countries had been generous in their response to the tsunami.

But he defended his assertion that wealthy countries could do more to help poor ones. "I will always be of the view that as the rich world is getting richer -- Europe, North America, Japan, Asia, the Gulf countries -- it should be possible to feed all the world's children, and we are not at the moment," he said.

[Chalkstripe]

I would say that the retasking of a carrier battle group is a contribution that can't be measured in purely economical terms. It has a mass of airlift , engineers and medical assets that are very very deployable.

We always seem ready to have a pop at the septics, but this time I think that they responded magnificently. IMHO of course.