LIVE 8 A NICE LITTLE EARNER

Well, at least you can't complain that Live 8 hasn't done some good - so many merchandising deals were done to create the VIP areas and so on that even after the costs of putting the musical events on were dealt with, and the Princes Trust paid off, there was a USD12 million profit, which has gone to Africa through the Band Aid charity.

Of course, it could have been much more. The mobile phone companies who supplied the texting infrastructure made their usual fees off every text sent, which from two million messages soon mounts up into a splendid pile of slush. EMI is paying "a royalty" from every DVD sold, sure, but after all that fuss Geldof made about people making money from selling tickets on at a profit, why isn't he slapping the table and complaining about EMI making a profit from flogging the DVD? Or people making a profit from the book? Yes, we know that the main aim of Live8 wasnn't to raise money, but we're still not sure why its okay for companies to use it to boost their profits when those Ebay sales were meant to have been so very, very bad?

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