Log on!

Trying to fill in a funding application.
First it lists the criteria that scores the most points in order.
Priorities are:
1Black & ethnic people, including refugees, asylum seekers and imigrants
(This is a Scottish application and bear in mind I am aplying for a West of Scotland area and not a big city)!
2 Disabled people & their carers (I don't beleive for a minute they are second on the priority list if this area is anything to go by!)
3 Lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender (now I know quite a few folks in these categories in both cities small West coasts towns & even islands & they all live quietly and happily in the community with no fuss , so why have they been singled out in this application?)
4 Older people & their carers (now again correct me if Im wrong but should they not be at the top of this list?)
5 Areas of high social deprivation (now you can get that in all communities)
6 Towns with populations between 3000 and 10.000! (again forgive me if Im wrong but does that mean if you are in an area with less than that again you don't qualify?)

Iam not a racisit as there are plenty people born in Scotland of all sorts of nationalites and colour but why in this country do we punt "Black & ethnic" poor folks to the top of the list. Most want to settle in with the minium of fuss and not with finger pointing. How will born & bred citizens feel if to get priority funding you need to involve colour and ethinicity? a sure fire recepie to put folks back up as is happening if you are keeping apace with world affairs

What about normal young people with drug & alchol problems? I don't see them singled out in the above "priorities" What about our old folks who fought in wars & our wounded soldiers still fighting in wars? What about communities whose heavy industries have been devistated leaving dissafected people in their wake or fishing communities forced to scrap their boats and watch the Europeans fishing off their shores!

What about a small island community who has no "blacks & ethnics" as the insensitive funders refer to these folks? What about small villages and towns struggling to get half decent facilities and cant cause they dont have the above "priorities"

This is all wrong! Applictions should be judged on the merits of the needs of the area & commuinty applying and not be tilted towards creed, colour, race on sexual orientation! therebye causing a veritabl cauldron of dissatisfaction within our own country, community and immidiate vicinity which is building up into a potential explosive boil.

I sometimes think this country has gone too far in trying to show how accommodatiing we are to perhaps the cost of our own naturalised peoples....charity begins at home

In the meantime I will still buy my Romanian gipsy friend her Starbucks coffee , sub her now & then & blether as best we can in our broken languages and laugh together.