No honestly... well kind of...
This afternoon Bob Geldof, Gordon Brown, Benjamin Mkapa (former president of Tanzania), Susan George (political economist) and David Golding (Make Poverty History North East Co-ordinator and all round local legend) received honourary degrees from Newcastle Uni. It was a grand affair, but they let me in nevertheless.
The interaction between Geldof and Brown was quite interesting. They clearly get on very well. Gordon Brown made a speech (including three Bible references) and I have to say I was quite impressed.
After the presentation Brown left and the others along with Chris Patten formed a discussion panel. Some of the points in the discussion were really interesting, in particular:
- the importance of educating women in eradicating poverty
- the irrelevance of post-war institutions (UN, World Bank etc)
- the increasing influence that China (as a new superpower) is having over Africa
- there was also a discussion about whether or not aid should be linked to transparency and accountability. Geldof made the interesting point that in every country there is corruption (Watergate, cash for questions/peerages, Berlusconi) but that in poor countries this is more visible/controversial because it's a higher proportion of GDP.
As a final note there was an article in the Metro today highlighting that Britain has already emited more CO2 this year (per capita) than most developing countries will all year.
Susan George has been a hero of mine since the 1970's. Her book - "How The Other Half Dies" is a must read!
Posted by: semerkhet | January 08, 2007 at 10:57 PM