URE STILL THERE, ARE YOU?

So, as Channel 4 News continued, more criticism of Live 8. Firstly, for not being able to come up with any actual African artists for the UK bill. Bob Geldof's office explained that he'd only had three weeks to put the bill together and that all the black artists they'd approached had been busy, anyway (what, all of them?); Midge Ure, asked about the bill, suggested that the black and African artists would be there and that we should pay no attention to the official bill announced anyway - which makes sense, it seems that everything geldof said at the formal launch is being unpicked.

Then Clare Short, former International Devlopment minister, was on; she expressed her doubts about Live 8 - in her view, its demands are "too generalised" and gives the impression that you can change the world but "you don't have to do anything" which "demeans the suffering" of those caught in poverty; Live 8 is "an insult to the complexities [of development issues]; it's jolly and vacuous."

Asked to respond to this, Midge Ure made a couple of fatuous remarks that seemed to be taking aim at Short for not having been part of the original Live Aid line-up: "Where was she twenty years ago?" (Erm... she was an Opposition MP representing Birmingham Ladywood, Midge, and was sitting on the Home Affairs Select Committee.)

music live 8 midge ure clare short