AND A JOLLY GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL

So the G8 concerts entertained us and made us all feel good about sending a message to our political leaders to lift African debt so that the continent's leaders pass the savings on to their starving and their poor.

Sir Bob wasn't thumping tables asking for money this time around and those G8 summit leaders were nowhere to be seen.
Why and why? ?

I think Bob knows very well that the public have sussed that our donations don't reach the needy. Most of Live Aid's millions went straight into the bank accounts of African leaders or else used to buy arms to defend the same leaders' positions of absoloute power against rebels and thus fuelling civil wars. So people's well-meaning charity ended up causing more misery than ever before.

The G8 summit leaders were notable by their absence either live on stage or by televised link-ups. Where was Gordon Brown yesterday, that champion of African good causes? They are still the other side of the fence, just as they will be on Wednesday at Gleneagles. Politicians are very good at keeping their heads down when reality beckons.

I predict that the G8 leaders will cobble something tawdry together, just as they have in the past. Something that looks good on paper, but with strings attached. Brown will harp on about " stringent conditions" being attached to the debt relief, that the authorities in Africa be seen to use the money to target the proper resources. But he has yet to come up with a cast iron way to do this. And if there is no cast iron guarantee that money given will be money well spent, then the corrupt leaders in Africa will again find a way to channel any benefits into their own already well-lined pockets.

Surely some of the angst and protest at back of the Live8 concerts yesterday should have focussed on the African leaders also. Even if ( and its a big IF ) the G8 summiteers were to hand $billions over to Africa it would still disappear down the same black holes.

Mc Cartney, Bono, Pink Floyd etc were whistling in the wind yesterday. The whole scenario about Live Aid/ Live8 whatever boils down to the same principle as giving serious money to an alcoholic beggar on the sidewalk whilst chastizing him nicely and asking him politely to use the money to feed his starving dog laying alongside -and whom the beggar is using to attract the sympathy & money in the first place. Actually, that is a remarkably close analogy.

I don't mean to be negative, there were many well-intentioned people enjoying themselves yesterday. But I am afraid the world is just not that utopian. It's a real shame that people cannot seem to bring an equal level of rational preception about what is really going on in Africa. It really isn't all that hard to see. " Sending a message" just isn't enough when dealing with out and out vicious corruption. It's hopelessly naive and in our hearts I think we all know it.


MSM