Charity begins at home

I appreciate that many groups work hard to help people in other countries and a lot of money is collected but I wonder? surely the UK is not the only country that runs these appeals, so just how much is collected throughout the world. I would have thought it was a farely large amount of cash.
I would like to see a "balance sheet" produced that showed the money collected, where it was spent and how much went on expenses in running the various appeals.
Every day we are on the end of begging letters or phone calls or tv ads that show our £2 a month or whatever will do wonders. What we don't see is the wonders performed. I've a feeling there are a lot of highly paid staff and organisers within these collection agencies. Don't get me wrong. I know a lot of very good people that do remarkable amounts of very hard work for various charities. Those people are the genuine ones and they have my admiration.
Have you ever noticed that the politicians in countries where many are starving never look thin. They don't walk everywhere or live in run down hovels. It seems that the world cares but those running the countries don't. All done for profit or am I just being scepticle.

Israel said they did not want to hurt the general population of Palestine, only Hamas. OK if thats the case then they could go in with all the aid needed for that population and rebuild the homes destroyed, working with the general population of Palestine. That would prove that their words about not wanting hurt them were not just empty. They were keen enough to build on the same land for their own people.

Did anyone else notice that even though oil prices continue to go down (OK a little blip yesterday where it went up a few cents) the petrol companies have started to creep the price back up.

I've been looking at my web site (www.tour-devon.com) and wondering what I can do to get some help with the cost of running it. My pension doesn't go very far and it is becoming too much of a struggle to keep the site going out of it. Seems that many thousands of people want to use the site and get whatever info they require from it but no one wants to help with the cost of keeping it going.
I've tried getting sponsors without any luck and appealed on the site for help. I think I will keep it going for another few weeks but if no help is forthcoming I will pack it in.
As much as I love the North Devon area and like to promote it there is a limit to what I can spend on it.

Time for an update

Yet again we mourn the loss of more of our brave lads fighting a war that should not be happening. Now it seems that two of those deaths are through "friendly fire". Someone made a bad mistake and I imagine that person will be going through mental hell. War sucks and accidents happen. I think it's more important to praise and support all of our boys and girls over there than it is to start trying to blame anyone for their mistakes. I know the majority of people hope and pray that the conflict will end soon.
In the old days the king was always at the head of his troups when they went into battle. Maybe if we were to put the politicians that call up these wars in the same situation they would think a lot harder about starting one.
I'm very puzzled about one thing. For many years the Jews fought for a home land. For many years they were persecuted. In the end they succeeded and the persecution was stopped. You would think that would make them more understanding about the Palestinians desire for a home land and make them less likely to persecute anyone. I don't know who is right or wrong about what is happening over there but I do know that what is happening is wrong. Both sides need to put away their weapons and start to talk properly with a determination on both sides that they will reach an agreement. Once again the civilians suffer most in a needless conflict. Both sides claim to be religious and both sides are breaking their own religious teachings with their actions. I'm not a believer but if I were I think I would be arguing that in the end their god will make them suffer for their sins. Why is the rest of the world sitting back and letting them kill each others children. The UN should be a force to be reckoned with and in these sorts of situations both sides should be told to pack it in or face the consequences and if they don't then a UN force made up of troups from every country in this world should go in and separate them, by force if necessary.
The more time goes on the more it seems that the world is becoming a worse place for our children to grow up in when it should be a better one with all the advances over the past century.
I would love to get some responses on this but although many people read the blogs- no one wants to bother to comment.

Time for a general moan and ramble

I see the tv companies are in a bit of trouble over their revenue drop. Shame, maybe if they gave us decent programs and less repeats they might get the audience and then the advertisers would see a value in placing ads. I don't know about anyone else but my viewing has dropped to virtually zero as it gets harder and harder to find a program to watch that I havn't already seen a dozen times.
I've just changed broadband supplier again. all these companies advertise how good they are but none of them seem to be able to get their act together and make a change over smooth. BT have an online ordering process but they forget to tell you it doesn't work and you will end up having to do it all by phone. I think all these companies have one thing in mind. Get you signed up and then forget about you. The last thing they want to do is give you any sort of service.
I'm getting on in years and remember when the companies did try to look after their customers.

I've had my website for a while now and am thinking of changing it a bit - or maybe a lot. Anyone have any ideas I could use? I would love to hear from you if you have.

A few changes

The tour-devon.com website may be off line for a few days, some time between the 9th and 18th January as I am changing broadband suppliers. Fed up with dropped connection and slow speed and lack of service from talk talk. Promised solutions that don't happen and promised phone calls that also don't happen. They offer a free service but that's only if you live in the right place. If not then they are one of the most expensive on the web and if you try to phone them you wait for hours to get an answer. When they eventually do, the person on the end is as helpful as they can be but probably need to pass you on to another section and that proves to be another long wait. So I've had enough of them and am moving.
If anyone wants to get in touch during the change over they will have to phone me land line.
There are more changes in the pipe line. the site is going to be re designed. It's been the same for a couple of years and has proved to be very popular so a bit of modernising is needed. Not sure yet how it is going to turn out. If anyone has any suggestions I would be glad to get them.
I'm going to try and keep the blog a bit more active this year so watch this space. Meanwhile I hope you have a Very Happy and prosperous New Year.