Bob Geldof Signifies What Is Wrong With The World

Vanilla Gorilla · Aug 17, 2016

Bob Geldof charged $100k to speak in Melbourne at Diversity@Work awards
ANTI-poverty campaigner Sir Bob Geldof charged $100,000 to come to Melbourne and give a speech about world suffering.
Geldof, 54, spoke about the tragedy of Third World poverty and the failure of governments to combat the crisis, at a Crown casino function on Thursday night.
But the Herald Sun can reveal the outspoken human rights activist charged about $100,000 for his trouble - a speaker's fee that included the cost of luxury hotel rooms and first-class airfares. Fellow activist and World Vision CEO the Rev Tim Costello spoke for free.
An event insider said the Geldof payments included the costs of a minder.
"It was an inspiring speech. But when you think he got paid $100,000 to talk about poverty, it seems like a bit of a contradiction," the insider said.
"That's $100,000 that could have made a difference to poverty right there. Everyone in the audience would have walked away in awe. If only they knew the full story."
The payment is believed to have been funded by event sponsors including the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Geldof's speech was the highlight of the eighth annual Diversity@Work business awards at Crown Palladium.
Diversity@Work is a private company providing workplace consulting and training

Its CEO, Mark Heaysman, last night refused to say how much was spent to lure Geldof, who was awarded an honorary knighthood in 1986 for his Live Aid campaign.
"The aim of the Diversity@Work awards is to bring the very important issue of providing better opportunities for people with disabilities and those from diverse backgrounds to the public spotlight," Mr Heaysman said.
"It is important to have high-profile supporters of the awards, to help spread this important message. It is a great shame if this issue is overshadowed."
Geldof appears on various websites spruiking the international speakers' circuit.
Mr Costello confirmed yesterday he was not paid, saying: "I know nothing of any fees."
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http://www.news.com.au/news/thats-a-bit-rich-sir-bob/story-fna7dq6e-1111118043575

Why Adele was right to ignore Bob Geldof and Band Aid

Bryony Gordon wonders why, when it comes to charity, the rich and famous donate their precious time while the rest of us must donate our money

I have so many problems with the latest Band Aid single that I don’t really know where to begin, but begin we must so let’s get going with the fact that two-thirds of the line-up are unrecognisable to anyone over the age of 30 – not least Bono, who in the group photo looks as if he’d rather be anywhere else than at the feet of a YouTube Vlogger (Zoella) and slightly to the left of a bloke who once lost The X Factor (Olly Murs).

Still, that’s not really a bearing on the single as such – it’s more a sign of how out-of-touch I am with popular culture, that when I looked at the picture my thoughts were 'gosh, it looks like a school photo on mufti day!’, followed by 'thank goodness for One Direction – making elderly women feel young since 2010’.

My real problem is Geldof’s insistence on shaming Adele for not appearing on the track. “Adele is doing nothing,” said Geldof at the weekend. “She’s not answering the phone… she’s not writing. She’s not recording. She doesn’t want to be bothered by anyone. She won’t pick up the phone to her manager. She’s bringing up a family, you know.”

This is as condescending as the song itself – do Africans know it’s Christmas? Given that over 500 million people living there are Christians, we must presume the answer to that is yes – and worse, it is a form of bullying that has sneeringly been dressed up as do-gooding.

The message is loud and clear, even if the music isn’t: Geldof is here to save West Africa from Ebola, and Adele, with her peculiar un-celebrity desire to sod the limelight as she brings up a toddler, is a selfish little woman who must be publicly humiliated.

Later, we learnt that Adele had quietly made a private donation to Oxfam. But in the shallow, self-promoting world of celebrity, the simple and silent act of handing over money to charity is not the done thing – that’s what we impoverished plebs do.
Instead, the rich and famous donate their precious time, and for this they expect to be celebrated and congratulated, as if before they flashed their expensively whitened teeth in the video for a song, we had no idea that Ebola was a problem, or that thousands of Africans were spending their last days on this earth in unimaginable horror, bleeding from every orifice, unable even to be comforted by their family and loved ones.

“Give us your f***ing money,” was Geldof’s message way back when, and it is his message now – you all dig deep and give up your hard earned cash because these famous people who make millions singing songs have deigned to give up a few hours of their time on a weekend.
“We really can stop this… foul little plague,” said Geldof when he appeared on BBC Breakfast yesterday morning, with no mention of the Disasters Emergency Committee, which has raised £20 million for the region, or Medecins sans Frontieres, who have been out there since March.
It’s not the troops deployed to Sierra Leone who are going to make a real difference – that honour will go to Geldof and his merry army of pop stars, even though they probably think a hazmat suit is a creation by a hot new designer.
Which all reminds me of something Noel Gallagher said during Live 8 nine years ago: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but are they hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick fifteen-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox seeing 'Sweet Dreams’ and thinks 'f**k me, she might have a point there, … we should really drop the debt, you know’. It’s not going to happen, is it?”

But anyone who refuses to go along with Geldof is pilloried or sworn at; so, when a Sky News presenter asked him a perfectly reasonable question yesterday morning about the tax practices of some of the artists featured on the song, his only answer was “it’s b******s”. This is the kind of response you might expect from a 21-year-old with a YouTube channel, but from a 63-year-old trying to engage the public in a subject as grave as Ebola, it just seems churlish. How can he expect us to take him seriously if he cannot behave in a serious manner himself?
Nobody wants a world full of Ebola, but nor do I want a world full of Malaria and HIV and Tuberculosis and numerous other diseases – not to mention conditions such as hunger and poverty - that are destroying the lives of many millions of Africans every day.
Certainly, I don’t want to be told how to behave philanthropically by a man worth an estimated £32 million, a man who is said to use tax avoidance schemes (it is telling that when a journalist asked him two years ago how much tax he paid, Geldof exploded at her, saying: 'My time? Is that not a tax?’ Well, no, Bob, it isn’t).
I don’t want to be implored to give charitably by a band that travels in separate private jets because they don’t get on (One Direction), or by a man who avoids Irish taxes while simultaneously telling the Irish government to help developing countries (Bono).

“It really doesn’t matter if you don’t like this song,” said Geldof as he launched it, “what you have to do is buy this thing.” But do we? Really? If we don’t, does this make us unfeeling and uncaring, or does it mean that we have already donated money to the cause, or a different cause, even?
This, I think, is my main objection to Band Aid 30: it is all predicated on a belief that the British public are mean-spirited and uncharitable, when in actual fact nothing could be further from the truth. It’s time the likes of Geldof stopped asking us to give money, and like Adele, started donating some themselves. Charity, after all, begins at home.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11236278/Why-Adele-was-right-to-ignore-Bob-Geldof-and-Band-Aid.html

Twas a scam the whole time, to line his pockets, a man with an estimated wealth in the vicinity of US$50-100 million , every one falls for it, and guy even gets an honorary knighthood for it.

Its unfortuante what happened to Peaches, but she was attending Queens College at 18,000 pounds a year at the same time Bob was doing the 2nd live aid thing late 90s asking ordinary working folk to cough up money for Africa

Bo has never said how much money he has contributed himself to Africa

BlackBillBlake · Aug 26, 2016

Vanilla Gorilla said:

Twas a scam the whole time, to line his pockets, a man with an estimated wealth in the vicinity of US$50-100 million , every one falls for it, and guy even gets an honorary knighthood for it.
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If he'd never done live aid, he'd have been forgotten long ago given his lack of talent as a singer. A thoroughly annoying person.

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Bob Geldof Signifies What Is Wrong With The World

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