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With Live8 only 2 weeks away, does anyone plan to watch it?
Personally, I’m glad the Eclipse is on the same day so there’ll be at least one interesting thing on the TV.
(two if the Lancs Oaks gets a good field)
Steve
I’d rather jab my sphincter with an oyster fork
So, you’re just sticking to your usual weekend activities?
I note with dismay that there is no jumps racing alternative that day, and the ptp season will have been finished a fortnight by then.
After you with the oyster fork, GH.
Jeremy<br>(graysonscolumn)<br>
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
why dont the celebs donate most of there wealth and leave themselvs enough to live on for the rest of there lives i am sure it would be about 1 billion pounds. anyway most of the money goes to the despots that run african countrys not to the people that need it corruption is rife there
Go on, admit it. I wasn’t the only one who had a look at this yesterday.
My observations:
The Killers were the best of what I saw on the UK show.
Isn’t a pretty damning statement about the British music scene that our show was headlined by a bunch of acts who’s best days were 30-40 years ago and the best performers were American?
Steve
Found myself more TV bound than usual due to sprained ankle so I saw bits of it. It confirmed for me, if I need reminding at all, that I am officially middle-aged !
But who let Peter Kaye on between Robbie and The Who singing  Amarillo. How could a nation to that to itself in front of the whole world ?
Zilzal
I understand that, due to my old-fartedness, much of today’s music is going to sound crap to me regardless of it’s true quality.
And I should say that most of the acts in the first Live Aid sounded crap to my teenage ears at the time (and still do).
However, I think it’s sad that our music was represented by so many of the faces of the last Live Aid gig.
In the case of U2, that makes sense, but when was Annie Lennox’s last day in the spotlight?
Ian’s "bums-on-seats" argument is, of course, correct but I think that it supports my argument that so few British acts have managed to make a meaningful impact over the last 20 years.
But who let Peter Kaye on between Robbie and The Who singing Amarillo. How could a nation to that to itself in front of the whole world ?
I had thoughts along the same lines when they wheeled out the tediously unfunny and massively (in both senses of the ambiguity) <br>self-indulgent Dawn French.
Steve
REM were the highlight for me. Stipe just keep coming up with the goods.
Of the newsters Snow Patrol were pretty good. I have to say though, as a BOF of a few years standing, that despite my reservations about Pink Floyd and, more particularly, The Who, ‘headlining’ this event both delivered outstanding contributions and if you were to look back in a hundred years I doubt that you’d be able to pick out any of today’s ‘acts’ who would have come close to matching their performance on a variety of levels. OK they are old, they look old and are anything but revolutionary or radical, and were playing thirty year old + music but it has stood the test of time and I’ll bet that in thirty years time The Killers (who I do quite like) will hardly be remembered at all.
Re- Geldof
You can’t crab him for his ability to make these things happen and I found the moment when he introduced the young girl who’d survived the 1980’s famine very touching and a powerful reminder that, despite the uphill nature of the battle and all the corruption, etc, people CAN make a difference and we shouldn’t, and can’t, give up because it all seems so difficult. However, despite my accepting that he is doing a good thing and that all the overblown ‘sincerity’ of the assembled rock <br>and pop stars is also, in essence, a good thing the whole bloody lot of them were getting on my nerves by the end of it. It just seemed a big celeb-fest with even the back stage interviews consisting of who had been introduced to who and who had seen who. The area at the front of the stage had been clearly allocated to the friends/family/hangers on of the various bands/labels and the ‘real’ fans were left out at the back. The likes of Gwyneth Paltrow sauntering around with young ‘Apples’ metres from the stage summed it up. It just didn’t ‘feel’ like a real ‘gig’ in the way that Wembley had.
Of the presenters Jo Whiley was excrutiatingly annoyingly, her most obvious fault being her insistence on ensuring that we all know she just simply loves all the new young bands, her being so with it and finger on the pulse. Johnathon Ross was OK , his mild cynicism being kept in check but bubbling close to the surface on occasions. I have to say that young Fern, while being no David Frost at the interviewing game, is a wee cutie.
What it lacked was a real anti-establishment figure  coming on stage with a straw figure of Tony Blair, p**s<br>ing on it, with knob in full view of the cameras, before covering it in lighter fuel and setting fire to it while doing an African tribal  war dance around the burning embers.
Now THAT would be revolution. Well, it wouldn’t really I know but never mind – it’s a nice thought.<br>
(Edited by cormack15 at 10:13 pm on July 3, 2005)
I suppose its quite easy to slag off the stars for their actions, but what have you actually done, to change things?
I certainly believe in the nanny being there, but never have agreed with nationalisation, dynamic business never works when run by comittee IMO. Nor will it work with too much governmental interfernce.
The highlights I have to agree with corm about REM, but seeing Pink Floyd once again was magical after which my grolsh ridden body sucumbed to sleep, gosh age is so wearysome.
I was glad that not only was aid mentioned but also the corruption of these countries and the subsidies to European and american farmers. Seeing the girl saved by live aid moved me to tears and yes aid does work for catastrophes, the asian tsuami has proved this, but these things have been happening in africa for many decades now whilst Aid has been pumped in. They will continue to happen whilst some one gives them or borrows them (with no payback time and often "saying aw keep it") a fiver.
The problem is though that the price of really helping them will be higher food prices, and the clearance of more "wild" areas of the world, similar to the clearances of forest for agriculture in Brasil.
So IMO there is no fix, except to educate these people and to hope that they will use this to further themselves and their nations.
On a musical level, it was all fairly ‘dad-friendly’ pop-rock, but that is to be expected.
For the record, I’m not sold on The Killers, and the bloke dances like Virgil Tracy.
Also for the record, I wouldn’t endorse the sharing of oyster forks. Most towns now have some kind of new for old exchange scheme.
Quote: from Ian Davies on 3:01 pm on July 3, 2005[br]Sadly, however, most people would rather support the fight on poverty by watchnig a gig than by actually making a permanent financial commitment to helping the poverty-stricken by being prepared to pay more tax.
(Edited by Ian Davies at 2:08 am on July 4, 2005)<br>
<br>A man after my own heart, Ian. Around 5% of my monthly wage is currently passed onto charity, and I would in a heartbeat introduce a compulsory charity tax on all UK citizens of 5p in the pound.
I would, however, still permit the individual to decide upon which charities his or her taxes were allocated. This would be performed by furnishing ever household in the country with a copy of the Charities Digest every year – not a logistical possibility if you can all get Phone Books and Yellow Pages, I’d suggest – from which a tear-out page with a given number of choices can be freeposted back to an agreed Departmental Office of some sort (and let’s have this based in somewhere like the West Midlands, where a form processing centre would be a terrific shot in the arm for currently beleaguered local employment rates).
I defy anyone to let me know why this would not work.
Jeremy<br>(graysonscolumn)<br>
(Edited by graysonscolumn at 5:27 pm on July 6, 2005)
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Ian,
Paul McCartney pays 40%, which is fantastic. Unfortunately Bono and U2 pay 10%, which is the Artists tax in Ireland. I was at Live8 in Hyde Park, I also saw U2 in Dublin the previous Saturday. Bono made one of his political speechs urging the Irish Government to contribute the 0.7% GDP for third world aid, Ireland currently contributes 0.4%. If raising taxes was to contribute to this 0.7% I would gladly pay my share to achieve it. I wonder would Mr Hewson pay his, after all I believe U2’s current world tour will net €175m in profit….. makes you think sometimes.
Stuff a compulsory charity tax, have it spent by some committees on building funrniture and fancy paintings, if I WANT to give to charity I will and in own way, if simply because the government of the day might not think my charity was worthwile.
Ian – just a thought but if you are happy for your taxes to be increased to allow money to be given by the government to charitable causes why is it conditional on other people doing the same? Do you only put a penny in the collecting tin if everyone else does too?
Quote from Ian – ‘I believe in a civilised society we ALL have a DUTY (not a choice) to make equivalent proportional contributions to global welfare.’
I have several problems with this view. Taxation should only be compulsory when it is paying for services that people in the society the tax is being collected by (e.g. the UK) benefit from (e.g. the NHS, Defence, etc).
Any other ‘donation’ that an individual wishes to make to any other cause should be by choice.
One could argue, as I think Ian is, that because we live in a global environment we have a responsibility to meet the econoimic needs of a wider group and that this should be compulsory.
Compulsory for who? Should it just be the British that are taxed like this or the Germans, French, etc, also. Should an Estonian be taxed at the same level as an American? How much tax should an average African pay?
If people selflessly make large donations then, logically, because their act is wholly altruistic, they would not be concerned at whether Joe Bloggs down the road has given as much as they have, proportionate to his income.
A strange view of charity Ian and one I cannot quite get my head around.
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