Nelson Mandela's speech

Sometimes a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do...
So I went to hear Mandela's speech in Trafalgar Square as part of the Make Poverty History campaign.





Big thumb's up for all the speeches (4 people talked) having definite measures that governments and world leaders should take to reduce poverty, i.e. stop one child dying due to poverty every 3 seconds. Ok, they were big measures and only doable by whole governments, but they still were definite things and not just pretty words. Here's my summary (you can read Mandela's whole speech on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4232603.stm)

1 - Change trade rules so that third-world farmers don't face unfair competition from first-world farmers. At the moment in Uganda it's cheaper to buy a European chicken than a Ugandan one.

2 - Reduce or cancel the debt of third-world countries to first-world countries.

3 - Untie aid - at the moment most of the aid supplied by first-world governments comes with lots of conditions, preferred traid agreements, etc.

I also liked Bob Geldof saying that he was sick of charity concerts and all that crap.
I didn't see the point of Jamelia singing or the choice of the presenter (a young people's TV show presenter).

These ideas are going to be presented by Nelson Mandela to the G7 leaders, and pressure will be applied for them to actually do some of this at the G7 summit in Scotland.