The Six O’Clock News: Fun Facts Proving the World’s Fucked Up!

I feel it would be deeply ironic if I missed the News because of my last ever Politics exam so here is a fun video of GWay at the K! Awards Electric Century’s song anything MCR-related damnit I’m back in an ‘MCR phase’. I may have never left an ‘MCR phase’. Also I can’t think of any videos that are appropriate so here are some fun stats that hopefully I’ll have regurgitated into an essay or four by the time this goes out:

• The UK spends 0.7% of its GDP on international aid, which was over £11 billion in 2013… in 2012 someone effed up and gave £87 million to Somalia, estimated to be the world’s most corrupt state (£200 million went to Afghanistan, the third-most corrupt state). By ‘someone effed up’ I mean that loads of people are corrupt for a variety of shitty reasons
• In 2002 the African Union estimated that $150 billion international aid is lost to corruption every year
• Half of Africa’s population live on less than $1 per day
• Living on under $1.25 per day means you’re in absolute poverty – about 20% of the world’s population is – but relative poverty means that even people in the UK or the States are ‘poor’… interestingly, 40% America’s wealth goes to 1% its population. If you’re reading this, Mr Obama, sort that shit out, yeah?
• The UN accidentally gave Haiti cholera when it was giving aid there after the earthquake because some Nepalese troops had picked it up. Oopsie. Still, the UN tried to help which is good because often genocides happen when it doesn’t (hi Rwanda!)
• Around 50,000 rapes occurred in the Bosnian War of 1992-5 and there’s been less than 70 convictions. Nope, that’s not a typo
• The DRC has had $17 billion of odious debt (which is debt left over from a dictator borrowing cash) written off, which was nice as the dictator man, President Mobutu, is believed to have nicked at least $5 billion of it to build himself a palace in the middle of the jungle. These days it looks like a carpark.

It’s a good thing I know how to control angry swearing and sarcasm… please remind me that bad news looks better in pink.