Another take on the Bob Geldof ColaLife conversation, this time from Lloyd Davis of perfect path. Lloyd is the inspiration behind The Tuttle Club and was a fellow G20 Voice Blogger. I like this take as it shows Nick filming the conversation, the hand shake and tap on the shoulder! You can see Lloyd’s original post here. Thanks Lloyd.
My question to Barack Obama – a reflection on the G20 Summit
3 April 2009 By 1 Comment
Image credit: Daudi Were of mentalacrobatics
Apologies to pure colalife-ers as this is a bit off topic. To everyone else these words are from a bystander who was privileged to have been able to watch, first-hand, the culmination of the G20 Summit. I am certainly not qualified to be a political blogger. But here are my thoughts anyway.
Having sat through Gordon Brown’s press conference at the G20 Summit yesterday, I decided (egged on by fellow G20 Voice Blogger, Nick Booth, it has to be said) I’d have a go at putting a question to Barack Obama. Well, if you don’t try . . . and I now knew how the system worked. Needless to say he didn’t pick me from the sea of hands. On reflection, dressed in my bright red ‘colalife.org’ sweat shirt, I stood out a bit too much and probably looked like a bit like a ‘shoe thrower’.
Anyway, this was my question and it sums up what I felt about the communiqué that was produced at the end of the summit, which I have to confess I did not fully understand. Am I the only one who thought that parts of it begged more questions than provided answers?
My question went like this:
Mr President, thank you.
Albert Einstein said:
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Would you describe the communiqué as being full of new thinking?
Pretentious or what? But seriously, what I’d heard had been uninspiring and sounded very similar to the gobble-gook that got us where we find ourselves right now. If people don’t understand what is being done to them, or done in their name, how are they going to rally behind what is being proposed and give it a chance to succeed?
The G20 Summit communique in a wordle
2 April 2009 By 2 Comments
If you go to wordle.net and paste in the text of the G20 Summit communique, this is what you get. I would have preferred if words like JUSTICE, CHANGE and CLIMATE had featured – I can’t believe they don’t.
A conversation with Tom Watson at the G20 Summit
2 April 2009 By Leave a Comment
Tom Watson was the first MP to start blogging and he is still going here. He’s carried a link on his blog to the ColaLife Campaign since the very early days and we follow each other on Twitter. So, in a way, I feel I know him pretty well but we’ve only met fleetingly twice and this is the only decent conversation we’ve ever had! Thanks Tom.
Tom is Minister for Transformational Government at the Cabinet Office which is a long way of saying that he leads on the efforts to rationalise the Government’s web presence. He is one of the handful of MPs who understand Web 2.0.
Ed Miliband talks to the G20 Voice bloggers
2 April 2009 By Leave a Comment
“One way out of the economic crisis is by tackling the climate crisis and getting people jobs in the new [green] industries.”
Bob Geldof on ColaLife, Condoms and the Pope
2 April 2009 By 7 Comments
Simon Berry talks to Bob Geldof about Colalife.org, condoms and the Pope from Podnosh on Vimeo.
Thanks to Nick Booth’s (podnosh) journalistic instincts I was able to get in front of Bob Geldof and, rather nervously, explain the ColaLife campaign to him. He got it and had some interesting observations. It is clear we share a similar view on the Pope’s recent comments on condoms. See the original post with Nick’s commentary here.
This what happened immediately after my conversation. I got in just in time. After the conversation with Bob Geldof, I was interviewed by Associated Press . . . who know’s where that will end up.
Which way for bloggers?
2 April 2009 By Leave a Comment
We, the G20voice bloggers, have just arrived at the Press Centre at the G20 Summit and this was the first challenge that faced us. Which way should bloggers go?
I now realise how new this experience is. We are definitely NOT part of the mainstream and lots of traditions have been broken to get us here. Each country has a long double-sided bench equipped with an ethernet lead and phone (there’s WiFi too). Within this set-up G20voice is being treated as a country!
I’m off now to see if I can bump into Jon Snow!
Who are the G20 bloggers?
2 April 2009 By Leave a Comment
Image credit: Dave Walker
Who are the G20 bloggers (?) I hear you ask. Here’s a simple list of our sites:
Daniel Kaufman www.thekaufmannpost.net
Ahmed Al-Omran saudijeans.org
Sokari Ekine www.blacklooks.org
Simon Berry www.colalife.org/blog/
Sunball Hussain and Joe Rowley (DfID youth bloggers) dfidyouthreporters.wordpress.com
Dave Walker (Church Times blogger/cartoonist) www.churchtimes.co.uk/blog
Richard Murphy www.taxresearch.org.uk
Jessica Uribe Salinas vivirmexico.com
Jotman (writes anonymously) jotman.blogspot.com/
Duncan Green www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/
Simon Todd www.climatecafe.org/blog
Vikki Chowney tech.bitchbuzz.com/
Cheryl Conte www.jackandjillpolitics.com/
Rodrigo Alvares www.novacorja.org/
Daudi Were www.mentalacrobatics.com/think/
Dr Kumi Naidoo www.huffingtonpost.com/kumi-naidoo
James Simmonds www.sendmyfriend.org/news/young-campaigners
Sunball Hussain www.myplatform2blogs.com/info/myplatform2
Joe Rowley www.myplatform2blogs.com/info/myplatform2
Rowan Davies www.mumsnet.com
Virgina Simmons one.org/blog/
Michael Kleinmann humanitarianrelief.change.org/
Nick Booth www.podnosh.com/blog
Rui Chenggang blog.sina.com.cn/ruichenggang
Faik Uyanik www.faikuyanik.com
Nacho Escolar www.escolar.net
Carole Edrich www.flickr.com/photos/webwandering
Richard Murphy www.taxresearch.org.uk
Alex Evans www.globaldashboard.org/
Kady O’Malley www.macleans.ca/itq
Montserrat Nicolas curvaspoliticas.blogspot.com/
Anthony Painter www.e8voice.blogspot.com/
Lloyd Davis www.perfectpath.co.uk/
Diana Vogtel www.350.org
Cédric Kalonji www.congoblog.net/
Also blogging with us is
Tom Watson www.tom-watson.co.uk
If I’ve missed any of you please shout.
Yes, I understand. But what about the 20% child mortality?
1 April 2009 By 1 Comment
Image credit: Alison Pearson
I knew today was going to be a bit of a challenge. Me, a ‘spare-timer’, going into an environment of development professionals. So although I was prepared I did feel I needed to reassure myself of the child mortality figures one more time. How bad is it really? How do the mortality rates in Africa compare with those here?
I got up early and reassurance wasn’t long in coming – a Google search on ‘child mortality in the UK’ was all it took to find this BBC article. This reported “Child mortality ‘at record low’”. Which strictly speaking is correct. In 2006, the global total number of deaths before the age of five had dipped below the 10 million mark for the first time. But just look at the breakdown of the figures:
Over a 16 year period (1990 to 2006) the total number of annual deaths had INCREASED by 1 million a year (700,000 + 100,000 + 500,000 – 300,000).
Despite this increase the mortality rate had decreased slightly but, in Africa, is still between 13 and 18%. Can you imagine living in an environment where this happened? If you ran a livestock enterprise in Europe, these levels of mortality would be unacceptable and these are human beings and these deaths are described as ‘avoidable’.
So, while I agreed with a lot of what was said today about encouraging good governance; re-establishing accountability between African people and their leaders (where this doesn’t exist); stopping the flight of capital into tax havens; removing the barriers to trade etc etc. We can’t just sit wait another 20 years without trying to do something to stop this horrendous death toll amongst children. Can we?
