Charity needs to start from home
I SEE that Grow Ltd are wanting to improve and expand their operation.
£2.6m. of our taxpayer’s money is being spent every year on overseas aid, with further increases being planned, yet we have this very worthy local organisation having to beg for money.
It’s a scandal in my opinion, and if we were bold enough to say, ‘Actually, we are going to spend this money on things that help our own people’, rather than being castigated there would be so many people saying, ‘What a great idea, why don’t we do that?’ Cut UK overseas aid and spend the money helping homeless ex-service people, for instance.
Let us not fool ourselves into thinking we are a big country, we are nothing better than a small UK town and we would not expect somewhere like Winchester, for instance, to donate directly to overseas aid. I fully appreciate that many people voluntarily give to various off-island charitable causes, and I am sure for our population size we are very generous, but we are talking about compulsory giving as opposed to voluntary.
I have a sign on my showroom window that says, ‘Nearly £3,000,000 spent on overseas aid and yet we cannot afford to give our nurses a decent wage’. It has met with absolute 100% support and I feel reflects the real feeling amongst many of the electorate that there are far better worthy things to spend our money on.
We are seeing increased cash being required for prescriptions only the other day, so do we give our money away off-island or do we spend it here helping Guernsey residents? It’s a no-brainer as far as I, and many others, can see. I heard the other day of a nurse called in last bank holiday Monday, she worked from 7am until 11pm without a break. Our nurses are overworked, underpaid and undervalued. Let us see our Overseas Aid Committee standing shoulder to shoulder in the wards alongside them, then they may appreciate that charity really does start at home.
TREVOR HOCKEY
Trev’s Motorcycles.