One of the great political truisms of the modern age is that whenever a Government department, usually with some sort of think-tank in tow, announces that its being allowed to ‘think the unthinkable’ whatever follows that statement is going to be:

a. Deeply unpopular, and

b. So full of buzzwords and jargon as to be largely incomprehesible and therefore an exemplar of policy-makers fundamental inability to think or express themselves clearly.

Such it is with this latest whizzo idea on the environment, personal carbon quotas.

So we get phrases like:

“The plan would see people issued carbon units - each equivalent to 1kg of greenhouse gases - to use when buying products such as flights and petrol.”

And

“Under their plans the total national carbon allowance would be steadily reduced to reach the government target of cutting CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050.”

What they actually mean is fuel rationing, but with the added bonus that you can buy and sell your rations in the open market - back in WWII this was called ’spivving’ - which pretty much sums up this dumb idea from the outset.

It was the biggest event in the history of the globe, the commentators gushed…

…those gathering gathering in July for the official commemoration of the 60th anniversary of World War II may beg to differ.

But then who am I to judge after Chris Martin announced that anyone who was cynicial about yesterday’s Live 8 concert was ’stupid’.

So I’m stupid.

Stupid because I can see past the posturing of Blair’s temporary alliance with Saint Hairy Bob of Dublin and the U2 Kid for what the ‘Africa Project’ really is, a homage to the personal vanity of a political leader who’s days in office are self-admittedly numbered. Africa is to Blair what peace in Northern Ireland was to Clinton when the G8 came to Birmingham. A downpayment on their political legacy and their personal meal ticket on the lucrative post-political career lecture circuit.

Stupid because for all the rhetoric about Africa trading its way out of poverty I know that what the West really means by free trade with Africa is a McDonalds in Jo’burg, a Starbucks in Timbuctu and its people making £120 trainers for Nike for a couple of dollars a day. Freedom for the West to to exploit, yet again, the riches of Africa but without the colonial overheads of having to ‘manage’ the place.

Stupid because what I saw yesterday was not the ‘greatest show in history’ but the last vestige of credibility and integrity that the music industry retained being flushed down the drain in a blaze of corporate mediocrity - it went with a whimper not a bang.

Best comment of the day came from Andy Kershaw describing the Eden Project concert, the only one to feature African musicians, as having invite Africa to its own party and then putting it in the conservatory. In London, they saddled the wonderful Youssou N’Dour with playing second fiddle to the anodyne warblings of Dido.

Yes, The Who served up a brief reminder of why, for nearly two decades, they were the greatest live band on the planet and, even today, remain a class above anything the modern industry has to offer. But if time has not yet diminished the raw honesty of Daltrey’s voice nor the windmilling genius of Townshend the performer and songwriter, their set - ‘Who Are You’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ - was thrust upon them by near twenty years in the music industry wilderness, forcing them to play music for the CSI Generation. Seeing them yesterday after having seen them at the Birmingham NEC on their last tour with John Entwhistle felt disconcertingly like Kraftwerk’s appearance at Tribal Gathering a few years ago, where the assembled masses would suddenly begin to cheer in the all the wrong places. It was only thinking about it afterwards that you realised that the cheers that day weren’t for Kraftwerk but because the crowd had recognised something that had been sampled and used elewhere by someone infinitely less talented.

Yes, Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ is still the most achingly beautiful eulogy to the fraglity of genius ever written and Dave Gilmour’s solo in ‘Comfortably Numb’ still the best guitar solo you’ll ever hear on anything that doesn’t have the name ‘Hendrix’ attached to it but, in musical terms, yesterday just wasn’t an ‘event’.

Ravi Shankar holding the crowd spellbound for 25-30 minutes at Monterray was an event.

Jimi Hendrix warping ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ into cry of rage and generational pain at Woodstock was an event.

Bob Marley bringing together the warring political leaders of Jamaica together on stage was an event.

Ian Dury’s blistering performance at the Lyceum in the late 70’s was an event, and so was Marley’s show at the same venue a few years earlier.

Kurt Cobain’s visceral acoustic version of Leadbelly ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’ on their MTV unplugged show was an event…

…and twenty years ago, when the late Freddie Mercury took the crowd at the original Live Aid show into the palm of his hand and held them their for 15-20 minutes by sheer force of personality - that too was an event.

If yesterday proved anything it that’s the music industry has turned in Jeremy Clarkson. It’s jeans may still be tight but its gut now hangs six inches over the waistband and it’s not a pretty sight. Arthritic and suffering from creative sclerosis all yesterday succeeded in doing is reminding us that majority of its brighest and best - Bob Marley, Ian Dury, Joe Strummer, Johnny Cash, Magic Sam, Otis, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Elvis - are all gone, some of them long gone and alive only only in our memories and our record collections and what little real genius is left just didn’t get invited to the party - no doubt for fear that they might speak out of turn, might bite the hand of those from whom we’re being asked to beg for a handout for Africa.

Instead we get the sight of Saint Hairy Bob and the U2 Kid glad-handing the Great Satan Jr. - Bill Gates, lauding the philanthrophy of an man worth billions for chucking a bit of loose change Africa’s way.

Damn straight, I’m cynical.

I’m cynical because I know that political change towards Africa, real political change, is not going to come as a result of a bunch of wealthy musicians telling us that the right thing to do is to go cap in hand to the G8 in the vain hope that Bush will spare a few dollars from his $450bn a year military budget to pay off a bit of its debt.

It’ll come when Africa decides to rise up and tell the World Bank and the IMF to shove it’s debt repayments up its arse.

It’ll come when the peoples of Africa decide it’s time to rise up and march on Europe, en masse, and demand a fair deal - you get several million African’s converging on the Straits of Gibralter and then see how seriously the West decides to takes the needs of the continent and its people.