Live8

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The musical highlight of Live8, no doubt, was Pink Floyd reforming momentarily to perform for the first time in 24 years.

In another worrying example of time just flying by, the ten concerts held simultaneously to persuade political leaders to make poverty history took place on this date four years ago.

The leaders of the eight richest nations - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and USA - followed the festivities by pledging, at Gleneagles, to double aid to poor nations by 2010, half of which would go to Africa.

Figures show that, in fact, the G8 have only delivered one third of the additional assistance promised, despite being two thirds of the way towards their deadline.

By the end of this year they will have only delivered about half of what they promised, with Italy and France responsible for 80% of the shortfall.

This is because France cut aid to Africa last year and Italy has delivered only 3% of the aid increase it promised.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some 34 million more children in African schools, an estimated three million people on life-saving AIDS treatment, and death rates from malaria have more than halved in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zambia.

The next G8 Summit will be held in L’Aquila, Italy, from 8 July.

Despite agreeing with many of the cynical sentiments expressed in articles by Michel Chossudovsky and Ann Talbot, who insist that the events were more a profit-making exercise for its corporate sponsors than a means of averting yet another avoidable humanitarian disaster, I like to believe that Live8 truly did increase awareness and turned apathy into activism in some quarters.

Yes, the 10 concerts cost £25 million to stage (the cost in terms of carbon emissions is something else, of course), performers at the Philadelphia gig received obscenely inappropriate gifts and the CD sales of the performers boomed (David, I think it only fair to point out, was the first to promise that any such profits would be donated to charity and encouraged others to follow his example).

What do you think of Live8 now: Success or failure? PR stunt or genuine political mass movement? Did you wear a white wristband, rumoured to have been made in a Chinese sweatshop? Did you wonder where all the black performers were performing that day? And what of the broken promises of financial assistance?

Your thoughts on any of this, and the rest, please.

As an aside, if you have yet to read David’s recollections of the 1969 moon landings - entitled “My moon-landing jam session”, in today’s Guardian - you can find them here. That’s certainly a topic for later this month, though.

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Originally published in the Official David Gilmour Blog on 07-02-2009 02:28 PM.