Can we now finally get rid of 'Do they know it's Christmas'?

[Tokenminority]

This song drives me absolutely up the wall. It's patronising, reductive, and it completely harms efforts towards equality.

I understand the focus on equal opportunities and stopping police brutality, but other narratives, such as the pictures painted in the 'Do they know it's Christmas' song, can be just as harmful.

'Africa' is not a country. You did not go on holiday to 'Africa', similarly to how you wouldn't have sent that you went on holiday to 'Europe' when you in fact went to France.

Of course there are major problems surrounding poverty on the African continent, just as there are in other places, but African countries are not only filled with begging, malnourished children who have never seen a Christmas present.

The picture attached is a photograph of Lagos. If I went on the street and asked random people on which continent that photo was taken, would anyone even consider the possibility that it may have been Africa?

So 32 posts along and still nobody other than perhaps one person has actually attempted to answer my last question or seems to have in any way read anything I've posted recently, but I'm the troll.

@MrsNoah2020

OP, you obviously feel strongly that Geldof and Ure got it wrong. So strongly, in fact, that you compare them to a slave-trader who killed 20,000 Africans. That being the case, could you explain what you are yourself doing to alleviate global poverty? You're so clear that Band Aid was wrong that I assume you must have found a better way. Could you share it?

Please point to where I've said that band aid was wrong? When I compared the live aid + song situation to the Edward Colston statue situation I was comparing the arguments people used when deciding on whether the statue deserved to stay. I was obviously not suggesting that the writers of the song have committed an act akin to the buying and selling of slaves.

The fact that you and another poster are getting this upset about a comparison which was quite obviously not meant to be taken literally, after pages and pages of lecturing me about how the lyrics of 'Do they know it's Christmas' are nothing more than a symbolic allegory, is strangely ironic.

I am getting seriously concerned about the way people are trying to rid the world of its history. Yes, things were not always dealt with as they should have been from our current point of view, but times were different and we need to keep the history so we learn never to repeat it - not just try to remove it and pretend it never happened. I'm waiting for the call to burn books, it feels as though it is getting ever closer.

Yeah but we can totally respect history while not playing Do They Know It’s Christmas on repeat for eight weeks every year. It is a bloody awful song. If I never hear the dreaded chimes of the intro ever again it will be too soon.

Well said eaglejulesk
Pictish, if you hear it just turn it off or walk out the place where its playing.

Thank you @Nevergonnagiveitup

@Pictish I never hear the song on the radio station I listen to, and I'm not in the UK anyway. But if you don't like it, then don't listen - it's not that difficult. I hate being bombarded with any Christmas songs, but I don't think that they should never be played simply because I don't want to hear them!

It's such a good song! And it was made specifically to help people.

I love it

Wow a thread full of people with the privilege of not starving from famine and living in the U.K. with a welfare state system saying that a song that raised millions for starving people (and still does) should be dumped because some people find it offensive. I think it's more offensive that you will be depriving people with nothing of support. You want to check your own privilege.

@FelicisNox

I also hate this song, as other have said: good intentions, bad lyrics.

I don't believe in sending money to Africa anyway. We've been sending billions in aid since the 50's and it's barely touched the sides (mainly due to corrupt governments taking as much as 80% of money raised).

It's a problem that cannot be solved and as you've pointed out, the whole of Africa is not the wasteland it's painted to be. Until governments change, their status quo won't change.

We (and many other countries) have been sending billions in aid to countries in the developing world for decades (in some cases precisely because their own governments are failing to look after their own people). It is not within our power to change their governments.

People are still in need. Should we abandon them to their fate?

Perhaps they wrote it as a Christmas song because the Christmas number 1 is usually the biggest-selling single of the year, and they wanted to sell as many as possible.

I find it disappointing that so many people on this thread (on both sides of the discussion) have automatically assumed that the victims of the famine were not Christian.

it wasn't written as a Christmas song, it was for Live Aid, in July. It was later adopted as a xmas song because it mentioned the word xmas and had bells. A bit like Stop the Cavalry wasn't xmas song.

Wrong way round I think - song came first as an Xmas number 1 followed by the concert

No - It was definitely written as a Christmas song. It was recorded on Sunday the 25th November 1984, and from memory, the news report aired on the Thursday before.

Live Aid was July 1985.

But yes - the aim was to reach people who were planning their very British Christmas and ask them to think about others.

Stick thin children being weighed in wings to determine whether they had a change of survival - and either given scant supplies of porridge or send to starve to death. Too weak to cry or brush the swarms of flies off their faces and eyes. Mothers listlessly sitting with skeletal babies trying to suckle from empty breasts.

This description is so accurate it's painful to read. I was a selfish, arrogant teenager but the images of those mothers trying to feed their babies made me sob.

I remember mum and dad and my siblings sitting watching the news just mouths hanging open - mum speechless, dad from faced. I still remember those images of those starving, dying babies.

Yup.

And contrast that to people sitting on their phones 40 years later giving out that someone tried to put food in their bellies.

I've just watched Back in time for the weekend on BBC 2 which happened to be on the eighties.

They showed clips of Live Aid and said 2 billion people watched it around the world. That's one in three of the population.

@FelicisNox

I also hate this song, as other have said: good intentions, bad lyrics.

I don't believe in sending money to Africa anyway. We've been sending billions in aid since the 50's and it's barely touched the sides (mainly due to corrupt governments taking as much as 80% of money raised).

It's a problem that cannot be solved and as you've pointed out, the whole of Africa is not the wasteland it's painted to be. Until governments change, their status quo won't change.

That's not true. The percentage of the Ethiopian population living in extreme poverty has halved in the last 20 years. Child mortality is half what it was in the early 80s. Aid has only been one factor in improving things, of course, but it has made important contributions to cleaner water, vaccinations etc.

I am cynical about charities like Oxfam, which fund big infrastructure projects that are often more about ego IME than serving the needs of people on the ground. Anyone who has ever been in a hospital in sub-Saharan Africa will have seen unused equipment, provided by Aid agencies but unsuitable because there is no one trained to use or maintain it, but...

.. there are many smaller charities that work with local people to understand and meet their needs, and that are about supporting people to gain independence. Women for Women link, for example, is a fantastic charity that supports women to get basic business skills, as well as learning about healthcare and their rights. The women undergo a year long programme, and many then set up small businesses that support their whole family. Or, if you don't like charities, try Kiva, which allows you to make micro-loans to people in developing countries. They pay you back, and you can lend the money again.

There are plenty of ways to help constructively. Still waiting for the OP to tell us how she supports sub-Saharan Africa though...

@MrsNoah2020

There is no point in me discussing how I support sub-Saharan Africa, because this is not about charity or charitable giving for me. I have said this a number of times already, but it seems not to matter as the argument keeps circling back to a situation and topic which is completely irrelevant to the questions I've asked in this thread.

In addition, telling someone a that they are a privileged idiot and belittling their experiences by asking what they are doing to save the planet is not really how you convince someone to change their mind about an issue. I'll happily listen to reasonable arguments, but at this point we are not even talking about the same thing anymore, so I might as well give up.

@tokenminority
If someone sitting at home in the U.K. with a belly full of food moaning on social media about the words of a 1980s pop song which raised millions for starving people (and continues to) is the very definition of a privileged idiot

Well I didn’t see Bono & Midge Ure pulling a song together in 5 minutes to raise funds for the NHS Charities - did anyone else??

I wasn't aware they had to for every crisis. Did any of the current batch of pop stars do so? No, we had someone weeping on their doorstep in their PJs.

A lot of celebs that have done something have been criticised one way or another. By the Be Kind generation

You can't do right for doing wrong.

A friend is currently working on a project for a firm that involves incorporating their pride month flag with their BLM flag (the company did nothing wor international woman's day). It's very 'busy' to say the least.

I have told them that NOONE will be happy and they need to hand out the flack jackets and hard hats. I hope their virtue signalling (for that is all it is) bites them on the bum, hard.

Please point to where I've said that band aid was wrong?

Er, you started a thread about how you hate Band Aid. To quote your OP, "It's patronising, reductive, and it completely harms efforts towards equality".

Band Aid = Do They Know It's Christmas.

I am increasingly suspicious that you haven't a clue about any of the background to this, OP. As a PP said, watch Michael Buerk's original report from the famine.