Out Of Africa

Another thing which has put me in a bad mood recently was that little fucker Mark Thatcher not going to jail. I know I’m not alone in this.

My attitude – promise – but read on anyway – had nothing to do with the revelation that he‘s an OTT fan of Sir Geldof and the Rats. Should have known.
For a while there, I’d been consoling myself through dark nights of the soul with cheery images of the chinless blunder [pictured] lurching in heavy chains towards a foetid cell which he’d have to share for 20 years minimum with a couple of huge sweaty chaps from the townships jailed for offences arising from unquenchable anger against indolent white parasites.
I said as much in the Derry Journal a couple of weeks back, only to be chastised by dorks for showing myself no lover of freedom. Some folk have no sense of perspective.
At the time of writing, he’s holed up with the gibbering gargoyle he calls “mumsie” in a London flat while his wife waits in the US terrified he’ll be let in. I’ve no sympathy. She married the slack-jawed oik voluntarily.
I gathered from Newsnight that the ugly old bat phoned South African President Thabo Mbeki begging him to put pressure on the courts to lift the misbegotten little toe-rag off the hook.
That’s a criminal offence. Corruption, attempting to pervert the course of justice, that sort of thing. Any sort of thing. Why isn‘t she charged? They could open a family wing in some suitable hell-hole. She could spend the rest of her days and nights hugger-mugger with her fascist mate Pinochet, him with his wheezing halitosis, her with her drooling dementia. What a pleasing picture it conjures up. Ah, dreams, dreams…

If you see me coming, better step aside, so as to avoid collateral damage. So advises knowledgeable Nine Fridays McDaid.
“You’ll be blasted by lightning when you’re least expecting it,” Nine Fridays predicted in Da Vinci’s the other night. As if there’s times I’m expecting it. Bollix, says I.
I’d assumed he was giving genial echo to the ‘phone-in view that some folks are certain of comeuppance soon, after dissing god for sending the tsunami. But nothing as trivially predictable.
“Calling god-the-father a godfather is one thing,” said Nine Fridays. “Making shite out of Bono and Geldof in one article is asking for it.”
But I was ahead of him. I’d decided anyway already to take some of it back. Had been taken to task in comradely style for implying last time out that the caring celeb combo were playing major roles in shoring up the system which generates misery for millions. Which was to do a disservice. Not major. They are but bit players in the global edition of Cool Britannia. It’s their mates do the damage.
Consider the Christian conspiracy in the lavatories of Congress which denies contraceptives to swathes of the world and wonderfully facilitates the expansion of Aids across, eg, sub-Saharan Africa. The pope and Dubya Bush, not Sir Geldof and Bono, are the dastardly duo directly involved. All we can pin on the Paddy popsters is their bullshit about the pope being a cool dude and Bush an undercover philanthropist. They supply designer sheep’s clothing to the wolves of the capitalist world. That’s all.
Or take the dysfunctional bossmen of Britland, Blair and Brown. The mass murderer Blair had scarcely sat down at the annual gathering of the New Labour gullible last October after promising to slaughter innocent people (preferably Arabs) at a faster rate in future when Bono bounced on-stage beaming to liken him to John Lennon and his sidekick to Paul McCartney. Not since Sammy Davis Jr. serenaded Richard Nixon has popular music been used to such obnoxiously inappropriate purpose.
The fact that, for all their fractiousness, Blair and Brown have readily agreed to renege on a promise to meet the UN’s 0.7 percent aid target by 2007 is swept under, glossed over, ignored. The poor of the world can go whistle a Band Aid chorus while they wait.
It was 35 years ago a Harold Wilson Government committed Britain to the uber-modest 0.7 percent pledge. Eight years since the final firm target of 2007 was set. One since the date was deferred for a further six years.
How come they aren’t engulfed in howls of anger? Well, it helps, does it not, to have a brace of Irish pop-singers on permanent stand-by to scamper on-stage issuing glowing testimonials to your perfect intent?
Brown’s been in Africa speaking of a “Marshall Plan” modelled on US support for Europe after World War Two. It’s a scam. The original Marshall Plan was drawn up by US business which wanted European markets reinvigorated and Left-wing sentiment quelled. Neither of these circumstances applies to Africa today. Which is why Brown’s proposed measures are virtually meaningless.
The headline offer is to pick up 10 percent of Tanzania’s repayments to the World Bank and the Africa Development Bank, and something roughly similar for Mozambique. In return, the two countries are required to give Britain a veto on how the money “saved” will be spent.
This isn’t a plan. It’s a manoeuvre in the never-ending struggle fuelled by personal ambition between two unprincipled politicians for leadership of New Labour. They’d be marginally less able to conceal the ugly truth if they didn’t have celebrity at their disposal to dazzle our eyes.
Here’s a few practical things—-none remotely revolutionary—-which might be demanded of Blair and Brown by those who promote them as good guys and claim influence:
Announce that the 0.7 percent aid target will be met next year.
Take, say, a fifth of the annual cost of the Iraq adventure, about stg.£1.2 billion, and use it to cancel immediately the UK share of the debt owed by the world’s 42 poorest countries.
Reverse policy and oppose demands by the EU, the IMF and the World Bank for the privatisation of public services in the poorest countries, particularly of water, as a condition for economic assistance.
Outrageous? Impractical? Extremist? Depends on the direction the matter is viewed from.
It’s the Blair-Lennon/Brown-McCartney leadership which abandoned the 0.7 aid target. Which prioritises killing in Iraq over saving lives in Africa. Which leads the world in zealotry for neo-liberal economics.
As ever, the choice we have to make is which side are we on. The glitterati have chosen, and should be seen in proper unsentimental perspective.

Another reason for coming back to this subject so soon is that Nine Fridays made me promise I’d prove him right and the world wrong by confirming in this infallible space that the bad song ‘Do They Know It’s Xmas Time At All’ topped the pops (I believe that’s the phrase) not twice but three times: Xmas ‘84, Xmas ‘04 and—-and Xmas ‘89.
The much-overlooked ‘89 version was, Nine Fridays insists, and he‘s surely right, the best of the three. Here’s the legendary never-to-be-remembered line-up in full, in no particular order: Bananarama, Big Fun, Bros, Cathy Dennis, D Mob, Jason Donovan, Kevin Godley, Glen Goldsmith, Kylie, The Pasadena, Chris Rea, Cliff Richard, Jimmy Sommerville, Sonia, Lisa Stansfield and Technotro.
Glen Goldsmith…Big Fun…Technotro…Will we ever see their like again?