Why do we help counrties that do not help themselves?

we spend millions + millions on aid. but hardly anything by comparison on ourselves.
Our counrty needs more police, more nurses{with better wages}
better education more hospitals, more beds for the hospitals we already have, area development, working with youth, crime reduction the list goes on and on and on!.
this maybe selfish viewpiont, but I am a survivalist, let's look after OUR future generations first!

I would say that's a fairly selfish attitude. If you want, as I suspect you do, to reduce the number of non-Brits coming to the UK looking for work, enough money to survive and a half-way decent democratic system, then you have to solve the problems in their country of origin. And I don't mean by dropping bombs on them.

exactly, we need to fix home first before go and spend billions and billions other nations.

You help countries from which you can get power or money. Maybe this money doesn't go for hospitals...., but for other reasons. I wonder why your country doesn't help those countries which really need help! Africa, Derfur, Somalia.....

This is really selfish.

I understand where you are coming from but I think I am right in saying that the government has a budget for aid to these countries. However these countries are having to pay back all the money put into helping them. The problem being they owe so much to countries like UK European countries and of course USA that they struggle to pay the interest which of course is of a staggering high rate. I think you will find UK and USA dont do it unless it is gona be beneficial to them. They reap in Millions probably billions in interest and the poorer countries will never be in a position to pay off the actual debt. If these debts were written off then the poorer countries could stand a chance of helping themselves. USA UK could certainly afford to do this. It goes alot deeper than this anyway. They want power and our prime minister(UK) is just a lap dog to G Bush anyway. USA go in and start war then good old England has to clean up

i think we do this because we are one of the richest countries in the world. and in order to stay that way, we have to aide countries that give us the opportunity to prosper. government, that is.

We're a soft touch and forget that charity begins at home.

Which country? You speak English, but that could be Canada, the UK, Australia, the Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Tonga, Guiana, ? there is another one... let me see... big country too.... oh yeah, the United States.
Look at the budget figures, most of them are still declassified... The US government spends the People's money on some things in the US like that, some in foreign aid but a lot more in Military expenditures. Most of the foreign aid is in fact Military assistance, helping the natives blow away their neighbors, in order to keep them in an inferior bargaining position as far as dealing with the US in import/export.

The one nation which is really taking over in trade is Communist China. They are already handing the US our collective head. There is another body part more commonly used in that expression "but-t" yahoo would blank it out, just as-sk anybody.

And get this, THEY don't get US aid. Not nearly on the scale that they have taken our collective bank account. The poorest countries get "aid" in the form of, they have to sell their products to US corporations at the price demanded, or get cut off like Cuba or worse taken over like Iraq, and coming soon, Iran.

US corporations own virtually all of Guatemala, Belize, Panama, El Salvador, the list gets bigger every day, but if the people there get "uppity" the US Army will install an "elected" government and put down the "terrorist rebels" like they did when the island nation of Grenada VOTED a Communist government into power. That was 25 years ago and guess what? The US installed government isn't in power anymore. You know that infamous "anti-American" summit last year where Chavez of Venezuela and Castro and all them nasty old nationalist presidents who look out for the interests of THEIR countries and people rather than OURS? That was held in Grenada. While and at the same time American TV was playing this retarded propaganda movie called Hamburger Hill.

Any foreign aid being sent to the third world countries is sent to try to buy off the people so they don't kick the American corporations out, like Chavez is doing in Venezuela.

Foreign aid is given to less developed countries for a number of reasons including:
1. Moral responsibility - much of the developed world's sociological, cultural and religious beliefs involve the idea that there is a responsilibility to help those less fortunate.
2. Past history & relationship - many developed countries have a bond with developing countries formed though history which has provided benefits eg. the Allies would not have defeated Japan without the help of the Indian subcontinent in WWII, the French and British benefitted massively from their empires of the 19th Century in Asia and Africa. It is in the interests of developed nations to ensure the contininued strength of developing nations as trading partners and potential allies. It can (and has been) argued that the developed world has extracted more mineral wealth and slave labour from developing nations than we can ever pay back and that we have set back the development of these nations by many years.
3. Political - Disillusioned & uneducated nations present dangers to developed countries' interests eg Afghanistan, Somalia etc in the form of harbouring terrorism, indulging in wars with neighbours, threatening the assured supply of resources to our industries, threatening tourism etc.
4. Economic - The economic ideal is surely that everybody in the world can produce something that somebody else in the world wants to buy, earning them enough money to buy something they need, ensuring global trade & competition, increasing the supply of money and making us all better off. This will never happen when a large portion of the world is starving and uneducated.
5. Military - There are plainly situations in the world that cannot be allowed to continue as they perhaps threaten to escalate elswhere eg Serbia in the 90's. The provision of aid in these circumstances helps ensure the donor's own security and / or the security of its allies.

Finally, however short we feel we may be of nurses & policement, ask yourself when was the last time you ran across a street to avoid a sniper to find food, walked ten miles for dirty water to drink or watched a relative die of TB? Needs are all relative and I count myself very lucky to live where I do (UK) and don't begrudge a penny of the aid we give.