ICE ICE BABY

I’ve recevied this by email a few times already over the weekend.
“East Anglian Ambulance Service have launched a national “In case of Emergency ( ICE ) ” campaign with the support of Falklands war hero Simon Weston and in association with Vodafone’s annual life savers award.

The idea is that you store the word ” I C E ” in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted “In Case of Emergency”.

In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them.”

So here is a link to their campaign

London

Okay so I slept through most of yesterdays events. Other than waking for the odd text from far flung friends and family checking I was okay.
I watched events unfold during waking moments and was as horrified as I was in a similar situation (off work and ill) in 2001 during the awful bombings in New York.
The major difference I think is this time with more and more people having blogs and using image sharing tools like flickr and YGP there seems to be a lot of people using the event to boost their popularity. Taking screengrabs of websites and uploading them to a photo-sharing site or picture stills from TV. Yes if you were there uploading pics of the scene or how it affected you. That’s the kind of pictures I want to see, personal views of how it affected people. Like the bloggers in New York describing the events on the day and pictures out of peoples windows. That was in some ways more informative than any of the news channels. Regurgitating someone elses work and adding your name to it seems a little, well, rude.
There is now even a group pool on flickr. Not content with having 9/11 now we need to have yesterdays horrific events shortened to the brandtastic 7/7.
Screengrabs and TV stills aside there is very little shown of London and how it continued in the face of such adversity.

More Live 8

Okay so I’ve tried to be calm and not rant but I’m going to have to now.
The whole thing has just wound me up tighter than a tight thing.

Imagine a place where people are so poor they cannot feed their children let alone themselves yet others have more money than they could ever spend.

The aims of Live 8 were to stop this imbalance, ending poverty.

So the fact that the event itself had the same dual standards was horrifying.

It was shameless elitism that had up to 15,000 Pimms and Champers drinking corporate hangers-on in a section to the side and in front of the stage, whilst keeping the fans sober and hemmed in behind a fence a football pitch away from the music and the stars.

Having spent most of the day in with the real fans in the main section I was shocked when I came into the Golden Circle to see people ordering £100 bottles of champagne. Others complaining the hot water had run out in the plush loos with carpetting and expensive lotions and handwash. What I guess they failed to understand was that the other side of the fence had the usual festival portaloos. More so I think they were missing the point. Millions in africa have no water let alone hot water to wash their hands after going for a pee.

Sir Bob was making noises about people making money of the back of selling their tickets on ebay yet today a search for Live8 brings up more results than almost anything else I’ve seen on ebay. Surely a blanket ban would have been better.

I’m now wondering if Live8 was more about the music industry looking to further it’s artists whilst showing them in a good light than it was about poverty. The most obvious of these being Mariah Carey, showing obviously false affection for the poor african children yet demanding a mic stand and water whilst doing her self promotional set. Mariah I think you missed the point love.

Live8

Okay so Live8 is happening tomorrow – it coincides with London Pride so it’s going to be nice and quiet in London tomorrow. Not!
AOL are sponsoring the event and also providing live streams of all of the events so you can watch which concert you want. So I’m going to be at the London gig working to make sure everything runs smoothly. I’ll also be handing out AOL/Live8 goodies and helping out at AOL Tents urging people to sign the petition to make your voice heard at the event.
An 8am start though :o(