Yesterday’s Live 8 concerts were a fantastic spectacle. I know that many critics doubt the effect that the Live 8 campaign can have; and as this is a technology blog I will put aside the politics, but one thing the Live 8 event has done is to grab the attention of the media (I guess bloggers are a small part of that group) and the general public (I definitely fit there) and focus it on the G8 summit, something which most of us would normally ignore.
I watched a big chunk of the UK coverage on television (but didn’t stay up to 4am to see the end of the US concert) and for me the favourites had to be the original Pink Floyd (reunited after 24 years – as one banner said “pigs have flown: Pink Floyd reunited”), The Who? and Faithless (we saw a short clip from the concert in Berlin). The great thing about these events is that you also hear acts that you wouldn’t normally pay any attention to – I thought Joss Stone was great; caught the end of the Snow Patrol set; and was pleasantly surprised to enjoy what I saw of Craig David’s acoustic set in Paris. I missed the Madonna set (which was reported to be fantastic), and was underwhelmed by the much-hyped Paul McCartney and U2 version of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band but the McCartney performance of All along the Watchtower was great – it would have been cool if he’d played that with U2 (as they have both recorded it)…
Take part in the Make Poverty History campaign by adding your name to the list.
“The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. “
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html
Related story:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,363604,00.html
Well worth reading.
Interesting reading indeed – and I agree that aid is not the answer. The Make Poverty History campaign (and Geldof’s Live 8 concerts) are not about money. Sure, they want the debts to be dropped but as the articles DWalker links in the comment above suggest, much of the aid is misspent.
Dropping debt and encouraging fair trade is about letting Africa stand on its own two feet.
Ensuring that those in Africa have access to the same drugs which save lives elsewhere in the world is about basic humanity.