TBH I think Geldof is being what Elretardo’s lot would call a “bam”.
His heart may be in the right place, but unlike the older “hippies” who are real activists I think he’s a bit out of touch with society today and how easy it is for a protest movement to turn gnarly – even if he “dresses like a homeless” (like Ali G says) he has been living in an ivory tower of money and pop stardom (his back catalogue tunes still bring in royalties) and as elretardo says clearly doesn’t realise the potential negative impact such a protest could have.
Let us also remember Geldof’s other “achievements”…
- most of his fame comes from a no1 he had in the 70s which was singing about a high school shooting in the USA – its no better TBH than that US rock band making a song about the Jodi Jones case..
- a decade or more of trash TV from planet 24, which he eventually sold to uber-corporate media group Carlton (with stacks of redundancies for the young staff there)
- some rather dodgy business when he gained custody of his kids following drugs being found at his ex’s (Paula Yates) and then did a front page article on the daily mail IIRC (hardly the most progressive media outlet) [there are allegations the drugs were planted to fuck up Paula Yates’ bit of the custody battle]
OTOH I do think he is trying to do something positive but he’s no different from Blair and Brown IMO – he’s made full use of money, power, spin and jumping on bandwagons when it suits him.
He’s actually making Blair look good, Geldof would never have dared suggesting protests with the original live aid because Thatcher would probably have had him nicked and done over like the hippies on the beanfield.
At least TB is letting him have his say in public, he could easily have been
done under the Terrorism Act for some of the protests he is advocating – Ok maybe not locked up for ages but just an arrest and interview to calm him down a bit – I’m amazed this hasn’t actually happened…
TBH I’d rather see Tony Blair take up a guitar (wonder if he can still play it, or if he ever could?) and John Prescott do a dance routine at this concert, at least it would be top comedy value!
