Quake Aid

So no doubt the most horrendous thing to happen this weekend was the major earthquake over in Indonesia. It was a big one apparently 6.3 on the richter scale and due to the infrastructure of the country being a bit dated many, many homes were destroyed. Many lives have been lost, I think we are up to about 5000 people which is utterly devastating. Of course we need to get practical stuff out to these people asap, blankets, tents, food (loads of it), fresh water and medical goods, so it was good to see that the British government immediately pledged £3m in aid to the people there. It is always interesting to see what countries contribute what as you would think that the richest countries would send the most wouldn't you? Ok so the UK is pretty rich I suppose. We have a queen and everything so £3m seems quite good. Japan have decided to be the most generous and have stumped up £5.3m.
The in-betweens have all been good:

• Belgium: £444,220
• Holland: £640,702
• Saudi Arabia: £2.6m
• UAE & Kuwait: £2.1m
• Australia: £1.1m
• Canada: £959,243
• China 1.1m

But the biggest suprise is that the United States, supposedly the only super-power on the planet and the biggest country economically have only managed to pledge a piffling £1.3m. What? How can this be? How can the USA be so mean, and not even come up with as much money as the UK? A country that when talking about military spending talks in TRILLIONS not Billions can only come up with this amount is utterly pathetic. So you can spend trillions on ever new improved ways to kill people but only £1.3m to help the poor people of Indonesia - are tanks and black hawk helicopters really worth more than humans in this day and age?

I am sure the American people will stump up a lot more than their government can, and I know for sure that some good folks from that side of the pond will all head over there to physically help the poor of Indonesia so it seems a shame that their current administration has dismissed the disaster as not worth the bother. What also suprised me was that the EU also pedged a piffling £2m in aid, thats including even more money from the UK and all the other big European states, Germany, France, Spain et al this also seems a very small amount from some very powerful and wealthy countries. Shame on the decision makers and penny pinchers who made this decision.