And to think there are starving people in the world...

Well I don't think him not eating 60 odd hotdogs is going to cure world hunger, so wind yer neck in a bit. There is plenty in this world to be disgusted over.

Put another way, thats 60 bags of mostly pork testicles off the street not harming children.

Does Jamie Oliver have a good pork testicle recipe?

I'm sure he does.

Sweetbreads and pate on toast anyone?

It's probably worse that we spend thousands of pounds (OK, some hundreds of pounds, others tens of thousands etc) on hifi with barely a thought for the millions in the world who don't have enough money to get their children healthcare or education.

And why are we where we are and they where they are (financially)? It's down to geographical location - none of us can choose where we were born, we cannot earn it. If I had been born in the African bush I would not have the same wealth that I do have.

Didn;t mean to start on one - but there are some much bigger issues for us to address within ourselves than point the finger at others. We aren't responsible for what others do - but we are respinsible for our own actions - including greed and selfishness

Here here.

Ultimately all the money we spend on hifi goes into someones pocket or into taxation, be it the direct employees in "Naim", the component manufacturers in Taiwan, China, etc the shippers etc even the miners extracting the raw material from the ground.

All of the recipients are then spending their wages on goods created by other people, each person in the chain will be giving some amount to charity either directly or via taxation.

Direct giving to starvation charities may be a very short term benefit as all it does is to confirm the existence of handout based survival as well as providing the opportunity for funds to be squirreled away to the leaders of the distressed nations.

It is probably very good that we spend our spare cash on HiFi rather than hoard it under the "bed"

A house that I was involved with as part of the design team has just been sold for £18m. That made me pretty sick thinking of the excessive wealth of an individual when so many are starving. It is immoral, but I'm sure that the buyer has wrestled with this themselves at some point. I don't know who they are or what they do or how they run their lives, so maybe they do a lot of good somewhere. I don't know, but I can hope.

No disrespect here but charitable donations through taxation obviously isn't enough - otherwise direct giving wouldn't be as necessary as it obviously is.

I thought along the same lines while watching the BBC documetary series "Trawlermen" recently.
It showed the fishing trawlers dumping fish back into the sea, dead, because they had caught over their quota for a given species or because they didn't have a licence for that kind of fish.
I understand that the fish stocks have to be protected, but what a waste.
Regards,
Steve O.

"Competitive eating is a popular pastime in America.."

Get away. Really..?

Africa will always be starving and there is nothing you or I can do about it in the long term. We can help in the short term and relieve suffering for some. But Africa will always be hungry.

quote:

Originally posted by Derek Wright:
Ultimately all the money we spend on hifi goes into someones pocket or into taxation, be it the direct employees in "Naim", the component manufacturers in Taiwan, China, etc the shippers etc even the miners extracting the raw material from the ground.

yes, the fellows in switzerland who forge the zinc-aluminum blackboxes .... think of it kinda like the trolls in "the ring."

didn't your grandmothers tell you you had to finish your vegetables when you were a little kid, as people were starving in china? maybe that was an irish thing ... think the only people starving in china nowadays are those locked away in the political gulags.

i took a course on this in my history studies, "the world food problem." according to the academics, there is not really an overall shortage of food, but the problem is infrastructure and corruption in the starving country.

Without contraception, aren't humans just like any other biological system i.e; it will reproduce and the population will grow until the food runs out, then the population drops.

How about this?

or this?

i recall hearing about the gold leaf sundae. whatever. maybe they could also eat some anthony braxton cd's and get a good case of indigestion.