Government at Work

• September 22, 2005

mirror.co.uk – Tons of British aid donated to help Hurricane Katrina victims to be BURNED by Americans
From Ryan Parry, US Correspondent in New York
HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.
US red tape is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees.
Instead tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption.
And unless the bureaucratic mess is cleared up soon it could be sent for incineration.

Way to piss off our allies and make them question helping us out the next time a disaster strikes. This is absolutely disgusting. Sadly, it is all too common and is to be expected when dealing with a large government bureaucracy.
I have to ask to those who support single payer socialist health care: you want these people in control of your health care? Are you nuts?

Tags: Asshats

http://Array Carrick

Likwid:

Sadly, it is all too common and is to be expected when dealing with a large government bureaucracy.

Looka like another “What Ryan Learned at SayAnything” moment. Centralized control doesn’t work. Decentralized is not perfect, either, but usually fails when self-reliance is superseded by a misplaced trust in centralized bureaucracy.
Marty

My small baptist church (just one of thousands here in North Carolina) mustered up enough grub to pack 170 cases of rice, beans, oatmeal, spagetti and sauce, instant grits, instant mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, canned soup, canned vegetables, canned fruit, canned tuna etc (basically two weeks of staples for a family of 4), along with a bible and a little candy.

Based on my firsthand experience in loading our truck, there are more than 10 tractor trailer loads of goodwill headed south this week.

Burn it? God forbid! Send it to the Sudan if you can’t eat it all…
Seth Williams

(ARRGH! The internet just ate my response!)

It’s not neccessarily true that they went bad quickly. The rations can be warehoused for quite a long time, and some supply clerks aren’t always on top of things in terms of proper rotation of stock. It does happen.

When I was in Iraq in ’91, there was a batch of MREs recalled because the chocolate-covered brownies that came in some of the packages were bad, and would cause food poisoning.

So, I reserve final judgement until I hear more, but so far this sounds a bit like a thinly-researched hit piece on the federal response.
2Hotel9

I don’t know? I have eaten English Cuisine and this maybe in self-defense! Seriously, though, there better be a good reason for this action. Other than some beuracratic peon wanting to make some sort of political statement.
Seth Williams

As Seth was wondering, so do I. If they say it was unfit for human consumption, I’d lean toward them probably being bad in some way. Those rations can, and do, spoil.

I hope to hear more about this.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ Seth Yantiss

So, do you suppose the rations are bad in some way? Why would they have been listed as unfit for human consumption?
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

Weird that the ration packs would go bad so quickly. I mean, the red tape delays are stupid, but what kind of survival rations go bad that fast?

Also, the way the article is worded it sounds like there’s some sort of dispute over whether or not the rations themselves are fit to eat.

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