Category: Updates

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The G8 deal falls apart before it begins…

The oh-so-clued-up Sarda just emailed me a link to a BBC news story saying that The G8 deal on debt relief is already under threat.

Here’s a chunk of the article –

“The Belgians have apparently proposed changing the terms of the deal to give lenders more leverage over poor countries than they would have if they simply wrote off 100% of their debt.

In a document that has been leaked to the activist group Jubilee Debt Campaign, Belgian official Willy Kierkens is quoted as telling the IMF executive board that “rather than giving full, irrevocable and unconditional debt relief… countries would receive grants”.

The IMF would then be able to withdraw the grants if countries failed to meet IMF conditions such as implementing the Poverty Growth Reduction Strategy which is a pre-requisite for receiving debt relief.”

Now, Belgium has a particularly hideous record in Africa, given the actions of King Leopold in The Congo.

Let’s also remember how far short of what was being asked for the debt relief on the table at the G8 fell. It already left the countries concerned mired in a web of trade reform obligations put in place by the IMF. But apparently, even those crippling undemocratic ruinous measures weren’t enough. No, they have to not only put the measures in place, but threaten to cut the debt cancellation if those measures in any way fall behind the IMF timetable.

Is is possible to be born without a heart and live? Is there some sort of selection process for heartless, emotionless amoral bastards who see it as their droid like duty to ruin the lives of the world’s poorest people? I was already depressed about the post-G8 findings. These are acts of great evil people, no ‘great justice’ has been done, it’s no victory for Africa, it’s just a smokescreen to hide the ongoing rape of an entire continent from the eyes of a worldwide audience made aware of the cause then lead to believe the G8 are the good guys by two well-meaning but misguided Irish rock stars.

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Some great news for London radio…

It’s amazing how one discovers news these days. I was just looking at the stats for this ‘ere blog, and saw in the search strings that lead people to the site ‘Jon Gaunt Leaves Radio London’.

Aha, thinks me, is this just one person’s wishful thinking, or is the ridiculous waste of airtime finally making a move?

So I google the same phrase, and find this post on the londumb.co.uk message board, saying that very thing, that the rancid bigot is finally doing the decent thing and leaving Radio London.

Let’s hope Simon Lederman or Eddie Nestor gets the mid morning phone in slot – both have sat in for scumface and done a great job before now.

So, to Gaunty – good riddance. I care not where you end up, so long as it’s not anywhere that I would normally frequent. I hope it’s daytime telly, then hopefully I’ll never have to suffer your loserdom again.

And as you’ve got kids, give ’em a hug, give ’em a kiss… and don’t forget to tell that we’re glad to see you go.

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My Global Footprint

Got this from Barky’s blog – calculate your global footprint.

If everyone lived like me, we’d need 2.6 planet earths to sustain us all – here’s the results –

_________________________________________
CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES

FOOD 0.7
MOBILITY 1.5
SHELTER 1
GOODS/SERVICES 1.4
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 4.6

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 5.3 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.6 PLANETS.

________________________________________

sobering stuff.

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Finally the C of E gets its head out of its arse

well, over one issue anyway.

the general synod have voted overwhelmingly in favour of ordaining women bishops.

This is v. good news, and drags the church kicking and screaming into the mid-20th century, only 50 years late. The objections have been looking increasingly arcane and anachronistic, so I very much look forward to our first woman bishop, and hopefully, the first series of ‘The Bishop Of Dibley’ soon to follow.

Now, if only the church would get a move on with ordaining gay priests, and gay marriage, we’ll be almost up to scratch.

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blog tweaks

I’ve just tweaked the ‘individual archive’ view of each post on the site so that it now has all the links and stuff on those pages as well, not just on the front page.

The monthly archives are still in the more raw format, otherwise the pages would be just stupidly long, given the rather rabid frequency of my blog-life at the moment (it’ll slow down soon, I’m sure, worry not).

Anyway, it’s mainly cos so many people seem to be linking into individual blog posts of late, that I wanted whoever was visiting those one-off pages to get the full effect.

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Another great post about the bombing

I’m an avid reader of Jyoti Mishra’s blog – he’s eloquent, and full of righteous anger at the shit that’s going on in the world.

His latest blog entry is fantastic – he highlights the false dichotomy drawn by those who suggest that to draw parallels between the daily killings in Iraq and the London bombings is to be on the side of terrorists. He points out that it makes perfect sense to hate all such killing, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the US/UK military in Iraq.

I remember just after the Sept 11th terrorist attack on New York, there was a TV discussion programme on which a young, eloquent Muslim woman commented that hers and many others primary grievance against the behaviour of western governments, media agents and public opinion was the ongoing view that Asian and Arab lives were fundementally less important than western lives. That Arab ‘collateral damage’ is unfortunate, whereas Londoners blown up on tube trains warrants days of mourning and blanket media coverage.

The same could be said of just about any area of foreign policy from any European country or the US – that self-interest has been elevated to the point where pressure is applied to countries to destroy their very infrastructure just to make conditions favourable for western investors.

Her point could not be more striking than it is at the moment, and Jyoti’s blog highlights and explores it fabulously.

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And after the gigs, The reviews!

This was quick – the joy of the internet – here’s a lovely review of the Vortex gig from Tuesday night with Theo Travis and Orphy Robinson. Very nicely written.

And if you can read Italian, there’s a lovely review of Grace And Gratitude, in the ‘No Warning’ E-zine. Luigi Ametta who writes it has been very supportive of all the music of mine that he’s heard, and this looks to be another lovely review (though so far I’ve only read the Google translation, which is pretty garbled…)

If you’ve been to one of the recent gigs, please post a review in the forum, and if you’ve bought one of the CDs, you can post those reviews in the online shop.

Thanks!

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The Solo Summit

So last night was The Solo Summit a mini festival-within-a-festival as part of Hackney’s Spice Festival.

The idea was to have lots of performers on different instruments and across myriad styles all playing solo. As it was, it was that and a whole lot more – the solo performances spawned some really interesting collaborations as the mini-sets overlapped.

Due to the current mess of bomb-scares and transport disasters in England, a few of the performers were either late or didn’t appear at all, so the set was being re-jigged all evening, and as a result even more time was freed up for new combinations of players. The initial three long sets became four slightly shorter sets, and each set seemed to take on a character of its own.

The first set began with Tunde Jegede on Kora, who was then joined by Cleveland Watkiss, who was using my loop set-up to great effect, layering vocals on top of Tunde’s gorgeous Kora.

The rest of the set was three of Orphy’s students, Renel, Yao and Michael, two spoken word artists and guitar/bazouki, respectively, who played some marvellous music. My set dove-tailed into the end of Michael’s, as I took a short solo over the end of his last piece. I then played Grace And Gratitude, and went into The Kindness Of Strangers, which Orphy joined me on, with my loop gradually fading after I’d left the stage and Orphy took over for his solo spot. End of set 1.

Set 2 was very different – mainly guys from the London Improvisors Orchestra, it started with harpist Rhodri Davis (playing music a fair bit removed from his work with Charlotte Church!), Bass Saxist, Tony Bevan, flugal horn from Claude Deppa and electronic bleeps ‘n’ squawks loveliness from Steve Beresford. An interesting set with moments of magic, a very long way from the opening set! This stuff is really a stretch for the audience – they seemed to stay with it though, which was great.

Set 3 was back to many of the performers from set 1, with the addition of Pat Thomas on piano (an insanely gifted musician) and Steve Williamson on Sax. I played another duet with Cleveland, and a trio with Cleveland and Tunde on a track that they’d be playing as a duo, which worked beautifully. I had it set up that I was able to loop Cleveland in the usual way, so that gave us a lot of scope to loop ‘n’ layer and have some fun, and it came out superbly well.

By Set 4, we were about an hour ahead of schedule (whoever heard of a gig running ahead of time???), but my ears were getting a little fatigued after such a long time of intense listening. I listened to BJ’s set from just outside the main auditorium, where the processed ambient pedal steel wafted beautifully around. The set grew with the addition of more and more musicians, til most of the LIO guys were back on stage making a glorious racket. Cleveland then joined them, and once I’d turned up his mic, was able to add a vocal percussion loop to it, and start to inject a key centre into the melee. I joined in on bass, and the whole thing gradually mutated from free soundscape to twisted funk/swing groove thang, providing a space for the rappers/spoken word guys to rejoin the party. As the musicians peeled off one by one, the loop faded, and it ended with just bass, acoustic guitar and the two voices. One heck of a journey from the free to the funky. I look forward to hearing the recording of that one too!

All in, a fine evening’s music. A smallish crowd (hey, that’s brit-jazz for you), but an enthusiastic one with a fair amount of stamina!

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More on the G8 aftermath

Gig report from last night, and a couple of online reviews to come, but first, some politics! (yay! i hear you cry)

Today’s Guardian reports that Blair is a bit hacked off the aid agencies are down on the G8’s ‘acheivements’, but also suggests that he has some fairly ambitious plans during Britains tenure as president, to push for more movement on getting rid of farming subsidies, and for a new treaty on climate change.

Now, the problem here is, Tony now has a foil in both camps – he knows that Bush is not going to give in on capping emissions, and he knows the French aren’t going to go quietly on the CAP, so he can happily talk in non-definite terms about wanting things to ‘move forward’, ‘develop’ etc. without much fear that he’s actually going to have to do anything.

Of course, there’s the off-chance that he means it, which would be good. But there’s no real way of knowing. I don’t really trust him on anything these days. I can’t really see why anyone would after the outright lies he and his government told over Iraq. Why should he change now? He hasn’t even come clean over that disaster.

But I live in hope. We still have the problem of the G8/WTO/IMF/World Bank actually existing in the first place, but I’m a pragmatist and I really hope things move forward in a direction that is favourable for the world’s poor. We just need to remember that we’re still operating within a fundementally inequitous framework, and at some point, the world’s poor and working classes need to realise that the billionaires don’t really have our interests at heart. The globalised neo-feudalism of G8 style political dialogue is all about seeing what concessions they can make without spoiling things for share-holders. And therein lies the fundemental problem.

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