i couldn't believe the bbeb's coverage of live8. chris from coldplay announced at the end of their set that they were "about to show a film and the bbc would not be doing their job properly if they didn't show it" - cue jonathon ross, no comment, and then a lame interview with andrew marr. later on, travis were playing and introduced a backing film with statistics about amounts of money spent on various things and how many lives could be saved in africa by comparison. again, the beeb avoided the film, with briefest flashes of a few of the statistics, and long shots of the crowd and cross shots of the band so that you couln't see the screen.

mind you, plenty of shots of the aol and nokia sponsorship logos!

i phoned the viewers' complaint line tonight about it and demanded a written reply. i asked if they'd had many such complaints and was told there were a few yesterday. ok, i know it prob won't do much, but i urge everyone to get on the phone to the beeb and complain about this.

what little politics there actually was at live8 yesterday, was even further watered down by beeb coverage!!

along with sir bob's manager commanding that bands refrain from 'mentioning the war' as they didn't want to antagonise bush/blair, and along with sir bob introducing bill gates as the 'greatest philanthropist on earth', and along with the injustice of a huge corporate enclosure with invited guests at £1000 a head plus champers at £99 per bottle in front of the stage, while the great unwashed had to watch the gig from half a mile away on tv screens, this whole live8 turned into an absolutely shameful charade.

shame on you bob, shame on you bono, shame on you bbc.

There was plenty of politics at MPH. What surprised me was that the messages coming from the stages were not the watered-down, half-assed compromise the media had led us to believe MPH was about. Speaker after speaker criticised the neo-liberal agenda, the IMF, the world bank, the idea the Africa is helpless, and the legitimacy of the G8.
It shouldn't come as any surprise that the only message to make the TV screens was Gordon Brown's, we know the mainsteam media's a state tool.
i'm just saying that there was plenty of radical(ish) ideas brilliantly articulated, ready for any of the 250,000 to digest. It won't change the world, MPH is no quick fix, but awareness has been raised and seeds sown - not the world changing event some naive folk thought it might be, but a small step in the right direction, and a fantastic day out.

bush and bono at the inter american development bank with israel flag? back drop