If it wasn't for Bob Geldof, people would still be living in poverty

More4 is showing a documentary on Monday which includes a segment that takes a hard look at celebrity anti-poverty campaigns:

The film that appears to have angered Geldof is Starsuckers, a polemic against media and celebrity that will be broadcast on More 4 on Tuesday. A section of the documentary makes a string of allegations about singer-turned-campaigner.

They include the suggestion money raised from the 1985 Live Aid concerts to tackle famine in Ethiopia was mis-spent, leading to deaths, and criticism that the successor concerts two decades later, Live 8, overshadowed a mass movement of campaigners in the Make Poverty History coalition.

Now, you know how much Bob Geldof likes being challenged on his views."Fair point" he chuckled, "but we do our best..."

Did he buggery. Oh, no, it's all angry letters and complaints to Ofcom:

In the letter, seen by the Guardian, Geldof claimed to have had significant influence over world leaders, including Tony Blair, in the run-up to the 2005 G8 summit, and contrasted the achievements of his Live 8 campaign with the global coalition of anti-poverty campaigners, which he characterised as "a bit lame" and almost entirely ineffectual.

If it is true that Geldof had enormous influence over world leaders in 2005, you'd have to ask why. At the time of Live Aid, arguably Geldof could claim he had some sort of mandate to speak for everyone. By 2005, though, there were quite enough media industry millionaires pumping their unelected viewpoints into the ears of world leaders; having another one isn't the unquestionable good thing that Geldof seems to think. Surely he wasn't claiming Make Poverty History as his mandate?

Still: if Geldof does want to take the credit for Gleneagles, maybe we should let him?

Then Geldof turns to how GRATE it is to have FAMOUS PEOPLES involved with campaigns:

Claiming that "all that the combined lobbying might of the total NGO community" failed to ignite public opinion over global poverty, Geldof drew attention to the powerful impact of the Live 8 concerts, which were televised simultaneously to audiences around the world. "They are the vast billions watching," he said. "Brought together around the electric hearth of the TV or computer screen by the Pied Pipers of Rock 'n Roll."

Nobody would deny that putting Coldplay and U2 on the television gets lots of people to watch. But that's putting on a show, it's not actually making poverty history, is it Bob? That's the difficult bit.

I haven't seen the programme myself - obviously, it's not been on yet - but from the sypnosis, part of it's contention seems to be that it's incredibly easy to get lots of people looking at celebrities, but much more difficult to actually turn those crowds from passive lookers into agents of change. Simply going "we got lots of people to watch TV" actually supports the arguments, not destroys them.

And holymotherofallthatisholy, did you really think what a knob you'd look like saying "brought together around the electric hearth of the TV or computer screen by the Pied Pipers of Rock 'n Roll"?

His stupid boat stunt - you'll recall Geldof calling for a second Dunkirk, with people paddling from the continent to Scotland - turns out not have been a toe-curling embarrassment, but instead a stunt:

Fearing that Make Poverty History, a global coalition of development agencies, was failing to galvanise public opinion, he said he embarked on a publicity drive. It included "pretending" that millions of activists were headed to Edinburgh from the continent to "re-enact a sort of Dunkirk", he said.

There's two problems here. First is that MPH wasn't "failing to galvanise" anything - it was doing really well, until it suddenly found its focus shifted away to a lot of fluff about if it was going to lead not to a new deal for the developing world, but whether Status Quo would open a London pop concert.

More importantly, Geldof didn't "pretend" there was a flotilla - he called for it. It just didn't show up. The Age was just one of the papers which carried his original calls:

Speaking at a boatyard, Geldof appealed for English boat owners and even rowers to sail across the Channel for "Sail 8" and pick up thousands of European protesters trying to get to Edinburgh for the demonstration on the opening day of the summit on July 6.

Geldof alluded to events during World War II in 1940 when hundreds of thousands of troops were rescued from the German advance in France by a fleet of privately owned craft sailing across the Channel.

"What we are asking people to do is not re-create D-Day but re-create Dunkirk, which is one of the great national legends of our country where normal people got in their boats to rescue our soldiers, 380,000 of them, who were surrounded and came back to fight another day," Geldof said.

It would be the biggest collection of little boats seen since Dunkirk, he said. "This time we are asking that people take to their boats in their thousands and pick up the people of France for a friendlier invasion. It will be beautiful and amazing . . . I think if you have a little rowing boat that would get across, then jump in it and get as far as you can."

If he had been "pretending" they were coming, that would have been dubious enough - sure, there is much bluff-calling at international summits, but using your poker face to claim that dozens of pedalos and sunbeds are about to arrive on the beach seems to be designed to do nothing other than make yourself and the cause you're fighting for look ridiculous.

Geldof, though, appears to believe that he's so much better than the masses he claims to have been mobilising:

He contrasted the success of the Live 8 initiative with the efforts of anti-poverty demonstrators who "were never mentioned" at the summit, where they wielded "not a single shred of influence".

"The G8 has become a pointless ritual where the marchers and the wankers dressed as clowns (wow! Radical) get to throw stones at cops miles from the decision makers, who can't even hear them, and the cops get to crack some heads," he said, adding that he suspected other campaigners knew that his methods were simply more effective. "I can do rock n roll, they can do marching."

It's true. Dressing up as a clown and standing half a mile from a hotel might do bugger all. Is getting Pete Doherty to sing a duet with Elton John in a totally different country really a better strategy, Bob?

BBC's lack of Live Earth time delay earns a ticking off

The BBC coverage of Live Earth - and in particular, the 23 uses of "fucking" and "motherfucking" - has earned the Corporation a very strict and very cross dressing down from Ofcom - although they won't be fined.

The swearing - mostly down to Chris Rock and Snoop Dogg - poured out of screens during Al Gore's attempt to save the planet by flying pop stars round and round it in aeroplanes. The BBC hadn't broadcast the event of time delay, despite the exact same thing having happened on Live 8. Gamely, they did try to suggest this wasn't a bad move:

In the case of Live Earth, the BBC said it had been given full sight of running orders, films and scripts in advance and had not been denied access to artists and their managers. There had been meetings and written communications both internally and between Live Earth organisers and the BBC. The organisers had given repeated written assurances that the problems seen at Live8 would not recur, and that all the required steps would be taken in relation to artists and their managers.

In addition, the BBC said that it had identified the artists whom it regarded as
potentially problematic, and had taken steps, for example by briefing artists and
monitoring the live output, to avoid the broadcast of inappropriate material before the watershed.

Mmm. A signed piece of paper from Snoop Dogg saying he won't swear. Neville Chamberlain would understand.

The BBC's justification for not running with a time delay is a little odd, too:

The BBC considered, amongst other things, that the use of a short time delay was not appropriate because it would have resulted in coverage which was in no sense ‘live’, of an event which was accessible ‘live’ on other UK platforms.

A seven-second delay would have made it not-live? Because someone else might be listening to it on the radio and it wouldn't quite sync up?

Ofcom, though, takes into account that the BBC does admit it ballsed up, which is why they're going to make them say "sorry" on BBC 1 and BBC 2. Management will probably just be relieved there's no big cash fine to pay.

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?