Bono got his stetson back in the end, after Judge Matthew Deery decided that he preferred millionaire rock musician Bono’s evidence to that of piss poor former stylist, Lola Cashman.

Judge Deery noted in particular Ms Cashman’s unlikely description of the final night of the Joshua Tree tour in Arizona in December 1987, when she said Bono had given her the hat while running around backstage in his underpants.

“It seems to me that Ms Cashman’s version of events, the giving of the hat, is unlikely to have occurred,” he said.

Naw, course not. You’d never, ever find a rock musician running around backstage in his underpants… would you?

Oh boy, am I sick of all the lionizing of Live8…

…so I’ve decided its time to launch a new G8-themed campaign, Eviscer8 - you don’t need to give any money to charity or send text messages to a ticket lottery at a £1.50 a pop, you just have to promise faithfully to disembowel the next person you hear calling a fucking pop concert ‘historic’.

Alternatively you could read several blistering pieces over at African Honey & Bullets which should help wipe some of the bullshit out of your eyes.

As for my last words on Africa, I’ve decided to quote a couple of passages from Ron Suskind’s book, ‘The Price of Loyalty’. which deal with former US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s experiences on the Bono ‘Poverty Trail’™ and which should tell you everything you need to know about the West’s attitude to Africa…

…O’Neil’s interest in water had been growing since Ghana. This project was dear to Bono’s heart: a well dug with $1,000 made available after after foreign investors had forgiven much of Uganda’a debt. The tap - just a pipe emerging from a bunker of concrete that kept it from attracting animals - served 420 people, and their health had improved. Disease carried by water is one of the great treacheries in developing countries, where 1.5 million children die each year from diarrhea alone…

“President Museveni,” O’Neill said, shaking his head, “this is recommending you build a water system like in Detroit or Cleveland. You won’t need that for a hundred years. You just need to drop wells and mostly maintain them. Your people can handle the rest. We can do this quickly, maybe a year or two.”

A few quick notes here.

Providing clean water in Africa is, first and foremost, an engineering problem. You simply need to dig and install enough decent wells. Outside of major urban population centres the simplest and most effect method of disposing of human waste is use natural water courses - i.e. rivers. This present no real problems so long as the supply is clean.

O’Neill visited Africa in 2002. The latest socio-political surveys of Uganda still list baterial diarrhea, hepatitis A and typhoid amongst its major health risks, rared ‘very high’. Only last month an outbreak of cholera, another waterborne disease, claimed seven lives.

$25 million, by the way, is the sum of money the US offered for information leading to the arrest of Saddam Hussein and the current price that US have put on the head of Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

$25 million is also the amount that former presidential candidate, John Kerry, spent in May 2004 on an advertising campaign consisting of two 60 second TV adverts, one about his family and the other about his military service in Vietnam.

Oh, and $25 million would by you one of these.

But enough of politics, government and big business, what of the reaction of NGO’s to O’Neill’s calculations…

…Officials at aid or development groups such as Oxfam, or the World Bank, told reporters that the water issues were more complex than O’Neill understood - they’d been at it for years, after all, “It’s not enough just to drop a well down in the middle of a community,” said an official from Save The Children, the charitable organisation. “It’s been done lots in Africa before. You have to think of the maintenance of the wells. That’s always the biggest factor, skilled people to maintain the wells. What usually happens, and this happens all over Africa, is that there are no spare parts and the wells fall apart.”

In the United States, O’Neill had told everyone who would listen the same thing he had told the NGO’s in Africa: “The way to make really great progress, more quickly than people think is possible, is by taking away the excuse.”

“That’s always the biggest factor, skilled people to maintain the wells.” - what the fuck happened to that whole routine about teaching people to fish? What are the NGO’s - and both Oxfam and Save The Children are big players in the whole ‘Make Povery History’ campaign - thinking?

“Well, you see its Africa and those Africans… well they’re pretty good with the old fishing nets but give ‘em something complicated, something mechanical to do and they’re just not up to the job…”

Bollocks.

You see, the one problem Africa faces which rarely gets talked about is that unless you’re on the receiving end, poverty is big business these days…

…especially when 40% of the total International Overseas Development pot - and that’s a cool $20 billion last year - goes on paying for Western consultants, the same sort of consultants who tried, and may be succeeded in the end, to bilk Uganda for a $2 billion water treatment system it didn’t really need.

But what about the NGOs?

Oxfam raked in £172 million in 2003/4.
Save The Children? - £131 million.
Christian Aid? - A mere £60 million
World Vision Uk? - Only £42 million

Then there’s CAFOD (£28 million), VSO (£32 million) and Action Aid (£82 million). Seven NGOs - all of them registered charities - bringing in £547 million ($963 million) in a single year.

And that. ultimately is the real irony of a campaign like ‘Make Poverty History’ - NGOs, especially those most involved in the ‘delivery’ of overseas aid may well talk the talk but, if, by the remotest of chances, the polticians did get their act together and really make poverty history, well then that would be likes of Oxfam, Christian Aid, World Vision and others totally fucked wouldn’t it?

Who needs charity if nobody’s poor anymore?

But that’s another question for another time, even though there is one question, just one that I’ll leave you to ponder…

When was the last time you heard someone ask whether Africa even wants our ‘charity’?…

…because somewhere along the line I get the feeling that what Africa and its myriad of peoples really wants is a fair deal on trade, a few decent political leaders and the simple pride and dignity of sorting out their own problems without us Westerners keeping fucking their continent about to salve our own misplaced consciences and post-colonial, middle-class guilt.

So maybe next time you feel like mixing politics and music, why not head down to the ‘World Music’ section in your local HMV/Virgin/Whatever and pick up a CD by an African musician - at least that way you can be pretty sure that an African will get some of your money and not Accenture or KPMG.