Europe needs to get real on defence; Britain needs to get real on Europe
13 February 2025
Give a big welcome to Brazil Street Kids in London next week
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Post
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3 April 2012
If I can go back to my old life as what the French might call a 'medicin de rotation,' I'd like to alert the media to something happening next week, when a group of Brazllian former street children arrive in London.
You may remember at the time of the last Soccer World Cup in South Africa that I got involved in promoting the Street Child World Cup that preceded it. It was a big success, street kids from around the world gathering both to promote the cause of the many young people who still live on the streets, but also to play in a major tournament.
With the next World Cup in Brazil in 2014, that is also the venue for the next Street Kids World Cup, but the visit from Brazil is about making sure British politics and British sport remains aware of the continuing existence of kids forced to live unbelievably tough lives without proper shelter. The kids coming here next week are aged 15-18 and took part in the South Afircan tournament.
They will be here from April 11-18, and as well as taking in a couple of Premier League matches as guests of QPR and Arsenal, they will be training with Spurs and they will be visiting Parliament. In addition to launching the build-up to the second Street Child World Cup they will be promoting the International Day for Street Children on April 12.
Find out more at http://www.streetchildworldcup.org and if any media would like to meet the Boys from Brazil when they get here email Joe Hewitt Joe@streetchildworldcup.org
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Delighted to have your support Alasdiar,
Judy Reith, Trustee, SCWC
I remember the series on BEEB Three on the wags visiting deprived areas of South Africa before the last World Cup – Lampard didn’t come out of it well, his former spanish partner was the star of it, but ah well, such is life. But had nothing on what she experienced in SA, with the rife aids there, heart breaking.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/8665601.stm
All the best to the youngsters from Brazil, enjoy.
So of course we all wish the charity well.
But what are the issues behind it? Why does the likes of Brazil have street kids yet it has overtaken us in GDP last year (6th biggest in the world now.) Likewise with India, why so many poor?
Both these countries have a bigger gap between rich and poor than us right? Why?
Is there poverty in Britain? Mike Nesbitt became the new Ulster Unionist Party leader the other day and says one thing he wants to do is live with a family in poverty in a socially deprived area for a while. BBC interviewed one old working class woman who said “Its a disgrace. There’s no such thing as poverty these days.”
I see paper copy of Happy Depressive about to become available at only £4.90! (I thought it would be more.) Can’t decide whether to get it or kindle version now.
Sorry Alastair, on Guardian site, when Boris called Ken a c**t or something, I let spill that I am looking to you for being the next Dick Whittington mayor of London in the near future, hope you don’t mind. It will keep you busy in your lesser years, won’t it, Alastair. Pointless to say I wlil vote for you, since I am two hundred miles down the other end of the M4. but it is my capital city too, at the moment….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/apr/03/boris-johnson-rant-ken-livingstone
Seen Imogen in Tesos Ffoestfach with her mam, big Tescos it is, biggest around here, trying to keep a low profile under her hat, but I saw her, and she is right lush, I would, given half a chance. Song for Imogen from Llanelli, but she has the same surname as me, so I might be shagging my sister like,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=982o9n4OHCA
Tidy song, ey, Imogen, give }
Why do Brazil and India (plus other BRICS and other ex-3rd world countries) have so many poor?
Their having been colonies and the rampant birth rates combined with little social welfare have been unhelpful ….. less so now (our earliness on that new science is showing it’s not been all positive for the long-term).
People saying there’s no such thing as poverty are just playing at semantics. There are still useless waste of space parents that will mis-spend what is meant for their kids but I do get fed-up of some of the ‘happiness research’ telling us that British kids are less content than some in poorer countries (by knowing what they don’t have – which those 3rd world children are unaware of, sometimes blissfully-so). Comparing oneself to someone better off can be negative thing to do – all by itself.
Where you been? Missed you… 🙂
Yeah, I’m just a bit annoyed, I mean if we had street kids in this country or the kind of poverty India has, people would be asking how we could have world’s 6th biggest economy (Brazil) or a space project (India) probably rightly so, wouldn’t they. Is it right to feel slightly superior? Of course we still have inequality, and many kids are innocently born into utterly wretched circumstances, but I think crime is a worse problem than outright poverty in our ghettos?
HEADSUP! Boris and Ken are on Newsnight tonight, with Paxo, should be terribly interesting. Get ready for the guffahs from Paxo, and Boris going on about gawd knows what. And Ken really winding them both up, as he does. Boris and Ken at their best,
Borris on sausages with Paxo; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QplCetQYYKw
Ken (well, it sounds like him); http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4Kdyy5eTHs
Though yes, it might not be Ken, supplying the voice-over.
Being among the first to have an industrial revolution we fed it with raw materials bought cheaply from places like India. ‘Our’ effect there was really not all bad although attitudes there are hardening as if they were, even among those whose lives in the past 60yrs have been better than many compatriots’.
All India’s fellow BRICs members (plus, now, South Africa) have had one type or another of same kind of exploitation / repression / reasons for not being as able as UK / Europe was to reap the benefits of technology ….. till now.
There’s no excuse 😉 for your question about ‘how can …..’ get some different books on economics!
But the conditions need to be experienced first hand, I heard last week that in Delhi alone there are 1200 more cars per week on their roads (or did the speaker really say per day???).
Newsnight last night on beeb iplayer here. Lucky Boris and Ken were either side of Paxo. Ding-ding. break it up, towel time for viewers?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01fkbtx/Newsnight_04_04_2012/
…furthermore, like the way Boris keeps repeating himself “Do you want a “mare” ?” Yes Boris, London has already got one, a right mare of a mayor. And he is supposed to be educated.
We still have what some describe as a “feral” section of our community, Michele, but people don’t want to hear that, they go ostrich head to it. They just want to spout such things as “look at them lot over there”. Grass is not green as some make out in Britland. We had a civil war going on in our land until very very recently, with NI, and it is still cindering, so we need to watch it.
And by the way, welcome back Michele. Been away, or been busy in the garden? Nice weather last week, wasn’t it, but this week, brrrr! Mad weather.
“get some different books on economics!” There’s not many I don’t have! From the classics onwards, I’ve tried to give everyone a fair hearing, whether left wing, right wing, centre, even Marx. Biggest focus has been on the books by those who predicted the 2008 crash though.
Oh yeah and point is, regardless of how we got there, if in Britain we had that many poor in modern times, whilst also having the opulence of a space program, people wouldn’t stand for it. I think you agree with this your “There’s not excuse” right.
P.s. I was hoping to get an answer from you before your vacation about Ireland / IRA stuff, dunno which blog that was now but.
Some bloke in the US said trouble was ahead in 2005, I think it was. But he was close, and he was right how bad it would be reaguns.
Saw on beeb news yesterday Greece athletes getting ready for the London Olympics, on fields of grass overgrown not cut, having to get money from family and friends to carry on, and worse. No money for Greek teams to travel to events held these days, and so forth. And Osborne give’s a tax cut to the wealthy, in the excuse they will tax-dodge less in the future. Some of that money we could have been sent to these Greek athletes to come to London to compete on a fairer level playing field.
Osborne’s economics on tax cuts are all wrong.
There was more than one “bloke in America” Ehtch, there were left wing, right wing and centrist economist predicting it. I was very lucky to read a few of them before the event and make a bit of profit from it!
Reading people that ‘predicted’ the crash is not very relevant to your question ‘how can there be so many poor in India’.
They didn’t happen overnight, they happened despite the short-lived sterilisation programme of males in the 70s, they happened while many were living on the streets and families still grew bigger. Perhaps it was about something as sad as people simply taking whatever physical comfort they could (and not knowing anything about infertile days vs the opposite – not that it’s likely to have mattered).
I don’t understand how you can ignore the advantages we have vs the disadvantages elsewhere, as if claiming credit for being lucky!
It’s like asking why there is so much poverty in Africa, ignoring that we ourselves have not created what we have for our infrastructure, what we can build on. We aren’t more worthy than anyone with less.
We’re also (most of us) hampered less by religion …..
In a country without a census, without literacy in a huge proportion of its adults, a country that allowed no imports of any type for decades at the start of its independence and a world that imposed quotas against cheap imports from them, effects on development have stacked up.
The pace of change in this century is incredible; it’s earning megabucks by exporting its vaccines while many of its own citizens have themselves not been protected. Some of that comes down to bad capitalism – huge support to business and export incentives and no minimum wage till very recently and very patchily – I believe you usually find that a sensible national plan?
vacation?
Anyway, don’t think I saw that post.
I think you thought I was disagreeing with you regarding ireland, and the causes of conflict there, but I don’t think I was.
Reading books about the crash does not prevent me reading other books!
Just as disadvantages of the past have not stopped brazil and india achieving enough wealth now to support some opulent behaviour, which could otherwise be used to support their poor – and I believe in our country we would demand that more of that opulence would be directed at the poor. It is in that sense I think our system is superior.
I don’t think there is anything sensible about the national plan of Brazil, and definitely nothing sensible about the national plan of India. India should have been a superpower long ago but marxism and the caste system have held it back. (Its debateble to the non-emotional the extent the british empire helped or hindered it.) There are signs it may break the chains but it has a long way to go to rival China or US.