DID THEY FORGET TO ASK YOU, DAVID?

No, we're sure that David Gray has only the best motives for attacking the Live 8 bands:

Gray believes most artists taking part didn’t have genuine reasons for appearing, saying: "It's a garish sight to me to have people who don't know what they are talking about, patronising their audience about changing the world. I don't believe in soundbite politics."

Gray says he would prefer to pay more tax so governments would have greater funds to tackle poverty. He argued: “Otherwise where does this money come from? World leaders? Do they go to the special 'world leader' pot and get the money? It's just… ridiculous."

Perhaps its just as well that David didn't play Live 8, then, if he thought it no place for Soundbite politics as, really, that seems to be exactly what he's indulging in here. And, like so many on the Hyde Park stage, he seems to have elected to go lurching off on a subject that he himself knows bugger all about - an almost Daily Mailesque fretting about 'where will the money come from', as if the rich nations are so short of cash that redirecting a couple of tenths of one percent of GDP is going to cause serious problems for highly developed economies; and as if the only solution is to give more money in aid anyway. You can almost hear the sigh in his voice - "okay, we'll pay an extra tuppence in tax to dig them Africans out their hole again..." - missing the point that debt cancellation and redrawing trade rules isn't about passing a big collecting tin around.

Which reminds us... we were a little surprised to see an advert for the "official" Live 8 book ("Foreward by Bob Geldof") in the papers at the weekend promising "For every copy sold, £5 will go to Live8" - as if Live 8 was, itself, a charity of some sort, raising money to do good works, rather than a concert promoter with a cash problem. Let's hope nobody gets fooled into thinking that buying the book is going to help people in real need...

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