Sunshine & politics

Its hard not to think of last weekend and this coming week without bringing the G8 summit into the proceedings. Like a lot of other people I watched the Live 8 concert this weekend and while it was entertaining and it was great to see so many people supporting the event I shared to some degree the scepticism many people in the media expressed about the actual point of the day. That was until Bob Geldof showed a film from 1985 depicting children in Ethopia who were dying from disease and starvation, I asked the boy did he ever wonder what happened to those people and he reckoned they were all long dead, which I agreed with and I felt guilty and sad while watching the little faces on the screen. At the end of the film Bob asked the same question and answered it by introducing a young woman who had featured in the film, who when she was filmed was on the brink of death. She is now in her 20's has graduated from university and is absoloutely stunning, with a future ahead of her. The point Bob was making was that despite all the cynicism about what exposure of the poverty in Africa will actually achieve, there is a point to trying to make a difference and that girl was living proof of it. I was deeply moved by that moment. I know that the >Make Poverty History campaign has its flaws and I'm not holding my breath that this G8 summit will make the breakthroughs that we are campaigning for, but if it makes people aware of the problems that are in the world and the potential soloutions and those people add their voices to the campaign, I can't see how so many people can continue to be ignored. Its worth trying for at any rate.