Kids Jokes and Band Aid

First of all a couple of jokes written by small children, there are more but I'm sparing you...

More Band Aid reflections and no real conclusion. The furore (real or imagined or ignored) over the Band Aid single resurrected with new squeaky clean pop stars and truculent and untalented old timers has at least taught and reminded me on one thing, the world has changed a whole lot in 30 years. The first Band Aid single was a welcome jolt to the government and the charity establishment which saw an angry and motivated few actually try in a very rough and naive way to generate and to place a need onto the world stage. For a time there was that fine bubble of heady optimism that we all bought into; music and media in the first world could somehow reach out and help those in the third and so trump those bureaucrats and do gooders who had clearly failed us and them (always an important distinction to make). It was like some cheap sixties pop-horror-musical film in terms of planning and plotting, Summer Holiday meets the Killing Fields. 

That was then and of course some good was done and lives were saved and awareness was raised and we survived the later Live Aid pantomime. That period, however disorganised, enabled us all to take a different view on “Africa”, one that wasn’t forever holding up a begging bowl. The rich but poverty stricken, complex and conflicted and continually let down Africa we now know slowly emerged.  The one we  know well enough to understand that we, with our own failed models of so called democracy can’t fix. We no longer occupy the higher ground, we’re all in this global mess together and sadly a regurgitated pop idea resung however sincerely by a set of vapid X Factor faces won’t fix that. Peace and good government needs to come to Africa, I can’t fathom how that has not happened, it is the cradle of most of our modern civilisation and  when it does finally wake up then it may well feed the world- and we might just need that to happen.