Brown calls for Asbos on Bono and Bob

It's nice in these disconnected times to hear young people taking an interest in politics, so we note with some joy Ian Brown's thoughts on international development:

"I get angry about how African kids have to live. I thought the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in 2005 was a real missed opportunity,”

“I applaud how Brown and Blair tried to put it at the top of the agenda. I didn't like the way Bono and Geldof hijacked the G8 Summit demo with their pop concert. The only result was Pink Floyd sold a few more million albums.”

“People have to realise you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago. It was like 1750 all over again: we are the great white do-gooders.

“If there is another G8 meeting then there should be a court order banning Pink Floyd or Geldof or Bono from leaving their houses until it's over."

It's only take a year and a half for him to work up the response, but better late than never, eh?

Annie hides herself away

Annie Lennox doesn't bother overmuch with the real world:

"I've cut back listening to music, watching television or reading newspapers.

"I don't want an information overload."

Wasn't, erm, Annie one of the big draws at Live8, encouraging the world to get more involved and aware of the bigger picture?

Daltrey calls LiveEarth unenvironmental

Roger Daltrey does, of course, have a point when he points out that Live Earth might hurt the planet rather than heal it:

"The last thing the planet needs is a rock concert... I can't believe it. Let's burn even more fuel. We have problems with global warming, but the questions and the answers are so huge I don't know what a rock concert's ever going to do to help.

"My answer is to burn all the fucking oil as quick as possible and then the politicians will have to find a solution."

Um... but if that would actually help, then surely Live Earth is the right thing to do, and, indeed, they should make all the Australian acts fly to London to play and boil some kettles on stage.

The trouble is, though, even if you decide to set aside Daltrey's suggestion, having a pop at Live Earth for harming the world while in the middle of your own world tour, as that doesn't exactly help with the global warming, either, does it?

Daltrey also isn't that impressed by what Live 8 did with the band's assistance, either:

"What did we really achieve at Live 8? We got loads of platitudes and no action. Who were we kidding there?

"At least with Live Aid, Bob Geldof was willing to work the trenches and they did save a lot of lives. We could see what we achieved at the end of it."

Politics, of course, is often invisible. Like carbo dioxide, actually.

Bono and Bob shown up by their mates

Oh, the weakness of metaphor - somehow, it seems, that Bono and Bob Geldof's defanging of the Make Poverty History campaign has bitten them in the arse. Having redirected the efforts and energies of the MPH campaign into watching a pop concert in London instead of actually campaigning, the pair are now discovering that the promises made over golf and brandies at Gleneagles might have been as empty as a late-period U2 chorus:

Bono last night called for an emergency session on Africa at next month's G8 summit in Germany as it emerged that rich countries are using the sympathy felt in the wake of the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London to justify their foot-dragging on meeting aid pledges made at Gleneagles two years ago.

"It's not just the credibility of the G8 that's at stake," Bono said in an interview with the Guardian to coincide with the release of a report from his Data organisation detailing the slow progress since the Gleneagles summit of 2005. "It's the credibility of the largest non-violent protest in 30 years."

No, Bono. It's your credibility that's at stake. You weren't elected to be spokesperson for MPH - you took that on yourself. And your self-granted mission to represent the masses who offered support for MPH one way or another, to become their mouthpiece, to talk to your friends on our behalf, has failed.

The rock star warned there was a risk of a return to the violent street protests of Genoa and Seattle at the turn of the millennium unless the G8 acted next month.
[...]
"Nobody wants to go back to what we saw in Genoa, but I do sense a real sense of jeopardy."

Doesn't this sound a little like Bono saying "C'mon, Pals, we drew the sting of popular protest two years ago, but if you don't give them common folks a bone, they might turn nasty."

Lets not forget, of course, that the violence at Genoa was sparked by heavy-handed policing - 200 police crashing into a school where campaigners were sleeping, beating journalists, and killing one of the protesters with senior Italian police tried for their part in events. Nobody wants to see a return of the violence of Genoa in 2001, but the best way to avoid that is to not treat people exercising their right of protest as targets for testing out brutality. It's hard to have any respect for Bono at the best of times, but for him to imply that it was the protesters who turned the 2001 G8 meeting into a bloodbath has taken him to new levels of humbug.

Since he's entirely self-elected, it's not clear how we can unseat him - but isn't it about time someone started a "Bono and Bob do not speak for me" campaign?