Live 8 concerts in Uk or G8 or what's going on?
 

In the States we are getting just a little coverage of Sir Geldoff's Live 8 concerts and efforts. What I don't understand is why it is Live "8" and no longer Live Aid. Also it appears he or someone associated with L8 is also encouraging protests at a Scotland G8 summit? How does this help Africa? In the story there was some comment about how capitalism was bad, but then Virgin and Sir Branson (owner of Virgin) was giving free train rides to summit protesters. So one of the best capitalists is helping anti-capitalist protesters? Please help me out with this! thanks.

Bob Geldoff is organising Live8 concerts to publicise the Make Poverty History campaign which encourages the public to lobby politicians to reduce third world debt. The idea of the march is to show the G8 leaders that the public want them to concentrate efforts at the summit on ways to combat world poverty.

Also, the British Government wants to make Debt relief in Africa a major thrust of the G8 discussions, so Bob Geldof saw it as a good time to give the issue even greater profile.

Gordon Brown (Chancellor, and PM in waiting) has dropped the VAT bill for the concert. Also, Bob Geldof wants a million protesters on the streets of Edinburgh during the summit, and Gordon Brown has indicated his approval.

Patrick: Thanks. That sums it up. One article I read mentioned anarachists and I was thinking L8 was basically advocating the typical G8 protests, which I thought was odd, inconsistent or ironic in light of the sponsors and musical participants.

None of those need be excluded, or course, whatever Geldof's intentions. The latest idea is to get lots of people to take their small boats across to the Continent to pick up potential demonstrators. You can imagine the response of the coastguards and lifeboat volunteers...

All this money for Africa is utterly misguided.

People have been throwing money at the problem for decades, and however well meaning they are, it won't make the slightest difference!

I would never ever give money to Africa which is an enormously corrupt "state' full stop. Until the foundations are dealt with, quite how anything can be built on crumbling ones is a mystery to me. I can't stick Sir Bob, he's simply a do-gooder who is about as effective as a glass of wine is when you're stranded in a desert.

Will Self wrote a fabulous article about this in The Times this weekend...he echos my thoughts entirely.