Five Miles Out

That feeling that remains

In 1990 this was going to be the album that was going to change the game. A band from Liverpool that were going to eclipse the Madchester scene and would dominate music. This single was released and it was good, though it sounds like early Stone Roses rather than the next stage of musical evolution. The band spent so long fiddling with the album that the record company drew a line and just released it.

The group were furious and it was the end of them. The album gets mentioned on lists of the best indie albums, but it was not a classic and definitely not a gamechanger.

It does not just happen to new groups, sometimes bands do it to themselves. U2 had a tour booked and had to complete the album Pop before it started. Every track from that album was remixed when they released their greatest hits.

U2 had form with this. When they reinvented themselves in 1990 and released Achtung Baby they had Paul Oakenfold remix Even Better Than the Real Thing, which was a single in its original and remixed versions. Some U2 tracks exist in up to 20 different versions.

Before he was a superstar DJ Oakenfold was a superstar remixer and he was not the only one from the early 90s. Plenty of indie and rock bands were jumping on the Madchester bandwagon and wanted dance mixes of their tracks. Some DJs were given impossible tasks and basically recorded new tracks using samples from the original.

When I first became interested in music 12 inch singles were becoming really popular (as opposed to the 7 inch standard singles). These were for fans and would either feature an extra track (or tracks) or an extended remix. In some cases there would be a different b side on the 7 inch that was not on the 12 inch to persuade fans to but both (when CDs arrived compilations of b sides for groups were a good money spinner, but in those days if you missed a track then it was incredibly hard to get).

Duran Duran were big on extended dance remixes in the early 80s. Their first number 1 was Is There Something I Should Know? Which had remixes of the a and b side on the 12 inch that were nothing like the 7 inch versions (and the b side, Faith In This Colour, is no classic, to put it mildly) but it was their first number 1, going straight in at the top. A sure sign fans were double buying.

The ultimate extension of this was the Shamen releasing En-Tact with bits of their music on that home music fans could put together to make their own versions.

The other way of boosting sales were picture discs. Literally a picture on the vinyl, another version for fans to get. Of course these were far too valuable to ever play and can now be sold for significant amounts.

The La’s only had one classic track, but it is a thing of beauty.

There She Goes

Do get ready, ‘cause here I come

I was born in 1966 and my first political memories are of the Vietnam War and the 1973 oil shock. I remember the two elections of 1974 (two days off school), but the first one where I had some understanding of was 1979. Thatcher. Capitalism. Capitalism was the answer to everything, the market would always get it right. Too much regulation stifled business.

This is still what the Conservative party believe (well sort of – it is free movement of capital and labour, but rather than be coherent and espouse the second they prefer to play on racism and deny the second). Planning regulations and environmental regulations get in the way and we would be better off without them. Companies can be trusted to do what is right.

Really?

Of course not.

Watch the film The Insider. Tobacco companies knew for many years that smoking was bad for people. They repeatedly denied it and released “studies” that muddied the waters. They used financial power and the threat of legal proceedings to stifle critics. Then, what do you know, it is bad for you. The film is the story of how it is revealed that tobacco companies included deliberately carcinogenic elements in cigarettes to make them more addictive

Watch Erin Brockovich or Dark Waters. Both are about companies that pollute the environment around their operations and use every legal trick they can to try and hide it and avoid paying compensation to their victims.

Watch Silkwood. A company in the nuclear industry covered up flaws in their processes that meant unsafe components were manufactured. For us in nuclear plants. When Karen Silkwood tried to blow the whistle on it she was victimised and then died in suspicious circumstances. In Britain? There was a nuclear accident at Windscale that was covered up for many years – in 1957 there was a meltdown that released radioactive isotopes across the UK and Europe. It was the worst nuclear accident until Three Mile Island in 1979. It was covered up. I went on a guided tour there in 1990 and asked about it – even then, after it had been public knowledge for a few years, they refused to answer my questions or even acknowledge that it had happened.

Films are not documentaries but these are pretty accurate and are an easy way to see the problem.

Now it is climate change. Despite over 99% of scientists saying that it is happening big business tries to ignore or trots out fake research so that its allies in power can claim it is not proven. Yet the big petrochemical industries had reports that this was happening in the early 1990s. Rather than deal with it they suppressed the reports so they could continue making money. Now it may already be too late.

Climate change is filled with feedback loops. As the temperature increases that heating causes changes in the environment that make the situation worse, causing another change that increases the temperature again.

Polar ice caps are white and reflect energy. When they melt they become blue seawater which absorbs more sunshine. Making it hotter so more of the icecap melts.

The permafrost in the Arctic and Antarctic zones contains huge carbon stores that have been there for thousands or millions of years. As these melt the carbon will be released and worsen the problem.

The increasing temperature and changes to rain patters are causing more forest fires (such as the enormous one in Australia in early 2020). Thus destroying the trees that are an essential part of reducing CO2 emissions. This is quite apart from logging that is still going in places like the Amazon.

It may be too late for humanity already. Things have to change now. Vote for parties that want to deal with it now. This is tough if you are a right winger, as they are the ones ignoring the problem, but if you care about your grandchildren and their descendants you need to make a change now.

This is the only thing that matters now. Not Covid-19. The Climate Crisis.

The Temptations started off as a normal Motown group. Like Marvin Gaye they became more politicised as their career went on. I would love my favourite track to be Ball of Confusion (which is staggeringly good), but this track is a masterpiece.

Get Ready

This is the coastal town that they forgot to close down

There is something about of season seaside towns – Clacton, Yarmouth, Southend, even Felixstowe. A lot of closed shops and one or two open amusement arcades ringing away to the sound of the hard-core fruity fan or a group of teenagers in the evening.

My first proper job at Grant Thornton was the audit of Felixstowe Tank Developments (FTD). (My first job had been doing a one-off investigation at penguin Pools with Rose – everyone said Rose was the best senior, so of course she left 4 weeks after this).

Felixstowe is half seaside town, half massive container port, this meant that there were plenty of clients to audited or gained there. FTD was half owned by the Felixstowe Dock and Rail Company and another organisation. If you have a group of companies you have to prepare consolidated financial statements, not just adding the balances together, but also netting off transactions within the group and accounting for part ownership.

There were five of us on the job – Sue was senior, Dodds a third year plus two second years Mark and Ian (Ian who got fired).

I ended up doing most of the lunch runs on grey Autumn days as I was the lowest on the ladder. I actually liked it as I had a chance to mooch around the town centre and check out Jarrolds book shop and buy only my 5^th CD (Tunnel of Love by Bruce Springsteen – the team all hated it).

It was at FTD I had my first contact with job stupidity. Charging was based on a system of weighbridges as lorries entered and exited. Twenty four hours a day someone would sit in a hut noting the weight down (no integrated IT in those days) and then billing would be based on the difference. I knew this, as documenting the system was my job. While we there they discovered that the teenager on the night shift was recording false figures for bribes. He was not clever about it – the figures showed massive discrepancies from the day he started. He was fired at once. There are ways of committing fraud (as we all found out as GT had a manual on them, though it is explicitly not an auditor’s job to find fraud unless it materially affects financial statements, at least 1% of turnover is one of the measures).

Most of my job was incredibly boring. Checking hundreds of transactions had been processed correctly so we knew the systems were working. Mark led on the job the following year, which was less fraught, but FTD was brought fully into the group and we were not needed after that.

(Coincidences. My year at St Catherine’s had around 120 people and around 360 in the three years. Steve Mallen, who was in my tutor group at Meridian, was there (I was living in Brightlingsea so had no idea he was applying) and then at Grant Thornton Mark had been the year above me at St Catherines and he was not even from East Anglia. )

When Morrissey first did songs like National Front Disco fans made excuses about them being satirical. It turned out that he was a racist and is associated with far-right organisations. Another problematic artist. This song sums up that out of season seaside feeling though. I won’t touch anything new that he does and haven’t done for years. Sadly seaside towns in East Anglia are a hotbed of nationalist sentiment (I’m being polite here) – left behind by the growth of cheap holidays abroad and the failure of governments in the 80s and 90s to do anything to replace that industry. It is always easier to blame foreigners when the Tories tell you to I suppose.

Everyday is Like Sunday

The only thing that helps me pass the time away

We were parts of two families stuck together into one. Anne and her daughters, Alison and Fran plus Dad, Mike and me. Divorce was lot less common then and there was some grief at school. It did not matter how often I explained to Mark Terry or Sean Kenny that my parents were married when I was born, the fact that they weren’t now was enough for them to nickname me bastard for two years. I thought it would get worse when Anne and Dad were blessed in the church, as Simon Coleman was there and he was in my class – Skids never said a word, for which I remain grateful.

We moved to a new house on the other side of Royston. It was an older house, with a downstairs bathroom extension. I hate downstairs bathrooms – it means that if you need to use them at night that you will be properly awake by the time you have walked down and the length of the house there and back. Plus you had to make sure not to stand on the dogs, even if you didn’t they may bark (as good dogs should). I swore never to live somewhere like that as an adult, but I did in East Ham.

The front garden was tiny, but the side garden was big. The fact that there were no windows was even better as we could play fives against it in good weather.

(Fran and Mike)

The back garden was a long and thin orchard stretching all the way down to a patch of rough ground that run along the backs of all the gardens. A great place for kids to play but it was damp and full of insects – I was bitten to shreds on my legs and it took abstaining from playing there to clear it up.

We shared bedrooms, which is not a lot of fun when you are the oldest. Alison and Mike seemed to get my age related benefits about a year after me, even though they were two and three years younger. One solution in the summer was to camp in the garden. Not something that would be allowed now as it was totally visible from the road, the fear of abduction stops lots of fun things that we did. If we hadn’t moved to Brightlingsea there was going to be an extension at the side so we could get our own rooms – it would have meant no more games of fives.

The house had a cellar that was cool in summer and the kitchen had a curious half door, which meant the dogs could be shut in there, but we could still see them. The house had character.

There was a garage that looked on the verge of falling down when we moved in. It was still there a couple of years ago when Mike went past.

(Garden camping, the council yard in the background and Judy the dog at the front).

Past the garage was the local council depot where the dustcarts went. It was full of rats, which suited the cats who would deposit bodies on the steps of the house. Now it is a modern development of flats.

Victoria Crescent was much further away from school than the old house. This meant quite a walk, though when Fran started school she had to be driven there. By then I did not want to be dropped off and wanted to walk there, especially after I went to Meridian and there were people to meet up with. Everyone I knew from Middle School lived the opposite side of the town but at Meridian I met new people, like Graham, who lived en route.

Walking to school was like walking across time periods. A crescent of detached houses then down a road of two up and two down terraces. Then across modern estates. That part of Royston was a patchwork quilt, partly because it was close to the railway station.

Martha and the Muffins had one hit in the UK. But such a great song.

Echo Beach

Good times never seemed so good

Neil Diamond was another of my guilty secrets. A proper teenage New Romantic/ Heavy Metal fan (and that was a pretty big dichotomy when it was all about tribes) did not like Neil Diamond. I did from when I first heard Love On the Rocks.

Really there is only one form of cricket worth considering – the first class game (that includes Test Matches) lasting 3-5 days. It is a true test of cricketing talent. A team with deficiencies cannot hide them.

One day cricket appeared as people had more entertainment choices and would not commit to days watching a cricket game. Competitive one day cricket started as sixty overs a side and it was treated like an ordinary match where you tried to bowl teams out. Enterprising captains then realised saving runs, especially at the end was more important and there were rules introduced about fielding restrictions. A 55 over competition and the 40 over Sunday League – considered a bit of fun and not serious.

I will not knock the 55 over competition as in 1979 it was the first time Essex ever won anything – Gooch, Fletcher, Lever, Turner, McEwan – the start of the most successful period in the club’s history. Deservedly Essex won the County Championship that year as well.

The tightest final was the 1985 60-0ver tournament. Essex scored 280 for 2 – a huge score in those days, including a double century opening stand from Graham Gooch and Brian Hardie. Nottinghamshire had Chris Broad, Tim Robinson, Clive Rice, Richard Hadlee and Derek Randall – an international class batting line up. Essex were without strike bowler Neil Foster but took wickets eventually once they broke the opening stand. It came down to Randall needing 2 off the last ball. If he had ignored it the ball would have been a legside wide, instead he was backing away and chipped the ball to midwicket.

Essex won 11 trophies in 13 years, including six county championships – there was not another after 1992 until 2017. Years of hurt indeed. Not that the county was bad – with Graham Gooch, Nasser Hussain, Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook there was an Essex player in the England most of the time from 1985 to 2017.

Overseas 50 overs cricket was the norm due to daylight hours. When England lost world cup finals in 1979, 1987 and 1992 the view was that the country needed to focus on 50 overs. It may not seem like a big thing but it started the trend for early hitting because teams were not likely to be bowled out. I am strongly of the opinion that cricket is better when bat and ball are balanced. One day matches where scores of over 350 are run up show the pitches are too flat and the boundary ropes brought in too far.

The logical consequence of this is 20/20. The McDonalds of cricket. Similar matches artificially shortened to try and get close matches all the time. How many 20/20 matches does anyone remember? Cricket fans talk about loads of test matches, but this short version of the game. It is like Premier League football being moved to 5 a side played on indoor arenas.

Now there are plans for the Hundred (18.4 overs). Mainly so the English Cricket Board can have another revenue stream. Franchised teams so that over half the counties do not get it (I mean Essex and Middlesex together – it is like Norwich and Ipswich being a franchise in some new football tournament or Rangers and Celtic). Just a pile of old crap.

I’m a hypocrite though – I watched Essex win the 2019 20/20 Blast, the only trophy they had never won – they looked behind the rate all the way until Simon Harmer took them home. Later that week we won the real one – the County Championship. I enjoyed that more. Two county titles in three seasons. Sweet indeed.

Sweet Caroline

And sleep out in the rain

This is about my friend Diane – don’t read anything into the title of the song we are, and have always been, just friends.

When I interviewed for the job at NewVic we were shown the room that we would work in and there was Diane. She looked up in bewilderment as this motley group of men and then went back to work.

When I started just before Christmas in 1992 we sat there quietly, especially when Bill (who was my manager) was in the room. Well it was quiet for about four hours and then we started talking and didn’t stop. Diane had been born and brought up in Newham so was the source of a lot of revelations for me. Conversely my tales of more rural areas were a shock to her too.

When I moved to London she showed me where things were and I would often drop in to chat as I drove to and from London at the weekend.

In 1997 I gave myself food poisoning. It was totally my fault. I had cooked a lasagne on Saturday for Sunday lunch with my brother and his girlfriend. There was plenty left so I ate some on the Monday – but I like cold lasagne and was eating bits of it before microwaving it.

2am and I started being ill and it just did not stop. I called the Doctor’s that said they did emergency appointments at 11am. I had a bath where I fell asleep and only woke up when I sank far enough down that the water got in my nose.

Luckily the Doctor’s was only 100 yards away, but it was a nightmare for me to get there in that condition. I was told that I was fifth in the emergency queue. After a few minutes I dragged myself to the counter and asked if I could have a cup of water as I had not held anything down for over 12 hours. I promptly fainted. I got bumped up to being seen at once and was prescribed anti vomiting tablets and told that if I could not hold down liquid by 5pm to go to hospital.

Easy to say but the nearest chemist was an impossible distance away for me in that condition. Fortunately work was less than a mile from where I lived. Diane came straight out and got the prescription. By the time she came back with it I was crawling to the door to get it. My head was in throes of a dehydration headache from hell and everything ached.

The tablets worked and I did not have to go to hospital. I was off work for the rest of that week and was not back on proper food for over ten days.

(Diane, Julia Carriman and Daisy Akposheri at the back of NewVIc).

Diane left and became a primary school teacher but that did not stop us remaining friends.

Di and I have been there as we ended relationships, moved home and commiserated about awful people we have known even though we have not worked together for 17 years. She is a lovely, lovely person.

Di and I have very different musical tastes but I had an album called Soul Decade, a compilation of Motown classics, that we could both get with (incidentally the most popular album I ever bought – borrowed by more people than any other).

When a Man Loves a Woman

It’s just a rumour that’s been spread around town

Robert Wyatt was drummer/ co-vocalist in Soft Machine, a band from the early 1970s. In June 1973 he fell from a fourth-floor window due to being very and drunk ever since he has been paralysed from the waist down.

I had never heard of him until I heard this song in 1983. It was written by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer, though Costello did record it later, but the original recording is by Wyatt and I think his vocal exudes a sad quality that Costello’s does not.

In the middle of a terrible recession that was devastating the country, but most harshly the heavy industry of the north, it confronts the fact that the shipyard workers got more work due to the Falklands conflict. Their continued employment was based on the deaths of conscripted Argentinian soldiers.

There is a concept of “Just War” – a war fought for an unimpeachably just cause. I do not think the Falklands War was one of those.

Sidebar. Soldiers do not get the choice of where to go and fight, essentially that is the job description. You do what you are told and go where you are told. As long as they obey the Geneva Convention and the rules of war they should not be held accountable. The moral guilt for any unnecessary warfare lies with the government that sent them.

If soldiers do not comply with the Geneva Convention, if they engage in torture, executions of civilians or unarmed prisoners and so on, then they deserve to be prosecuted like anyone else. Some will argue that they are doing it for us. I do not accept that – if the country has gone to war it should be because we are in a morally superior position – sinking to a lower position renders the raison d’etre for fighting null and void. I have no time for people who say that British soldiers should not be prosecuted where they have shot civilians in contravention of their rules of engagement. Whether that be in Northern Ireland or Afghanistan.

Was the Falklands a just war? Argentina tried to subvert the wishes of the people resident there. To be fair the Falklands/ Malvinas are a hell of a lot closer to Argentina than the UK. The Argentinian military junta wanted to invade to distract from problems at home. There had been signals from the British government that they did not care about the Falklands, in the same way it withdrew from east of Suez. There is no doubt that that the sinking of the General Belgrano was instructed by the Thatcher government against its own rules of engagement.

Ultimately it was the young men of both countries who were sacrificed for the political ambitions of their governments. Thatcher and Pinochet both deserve to be condemned by history for using these men for their own advantage.

So, no. The Falklands was not a just war on either side. The grown-up thing would be to discuss the mineral and oil rights and come to an arrangement. If the British concern was only for the islanders self-determination then that should not be an issue.

The deployment of soldiers by a modern democracy should be as a last resort and subject to the scrutiny of Parliament, not just at the whim of the Prime Minister. Just one of the reasons Britain needs a formalised, written constitution.

Shipbuilding

Let’s Get Electrified

How many people in entertainment will be revealed as predators on children? Afrika Baambata is the Godfather of Hip-Hop and the father of Electro-Funk. To be fair he has not been convicted of molesting any children, but prosecutions are barred by the New York state statute of limitations which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

When I first heard rap in the early 80s I did not take to it – rap pronounced crap as Neil said. I had missed Rapper’s Delight, the first rap chart single in the UK, but the only exposure to rap in the UK was The Message and White Lines (Don’t Do It) by Grandmaster Flash. The only other exposure to New York City street culture was Malcolm McClaren’s Buffalo Girls and a few breakdancing tracks like Hey You, The Rocksteady Crew.

I did hear Afrika Baambata and the Soulsonic Force occasionally on David Jenson’s show in the evening, but my tastes were very rock and indie in those days.

By the late 1990s the experience of all those foreign holidays had enlightened me to dance music. I had started buying mix compilations by DJs, initially The Ministry of Sound Annual series, but then spreading to other compilations, a lot of which had Ibiza in the title (obviously marketing said a link to the isle of hedonism helped sales).

It was the era of the super club and the super DJs, like Paul Oakenfold, Judge Jules and Pete Tong. In the UK I rarely had the time or energy to go a big club. Occasionally we would go to Liquid on Colchester High Street (it went through many different names) but it was not a superclub.

My taste is for trance music and trance music means Gatecrasher. Originally from Sheffield Gatecrasher’s resident DJs included Tiesto, Paul van Dijk and Judge Jules – all big exponents of trance. Sheffield was not an option but I did buy some of their CDs. I heard this track on Disco-Tech.

The era of superclubs appears to be gone. It is possible that night clubs are dying too. Following the 2008 crash younger people took to loading up on alcohol before going out due to the cheapness in supermarkets compared to pubs or clubs. Clubs always were ridiculously priced due to some sense of exclusivity.

I always hated the dress codes there were in clubs. In the 80s it was no trainers, no jeans and no T-shirts. They were meant to be places for young people but the dress code was a hangover from when night clubs were places the wealthy went for a meal and a show. The codes eased bit by bit, though strangely much faster in London than in the country. If you are going to dance you need to be comfortable.

Maybe clubs will come back to the British High Street – it will depend on whether Covid-19 is something to live through or the new normal.

Afrika Shox

The world turns around

Every year Grant Thornton recruited a group of trainees. You not only had to be good at the job but you also had to pass the tough exams each year – failure more than once would mean you were definitely gone. The trick was to recruit the right number of graduates to balance the losses from those who did not like the job, were not good at the job or failed the exams. Too few and the work was a nightmare, spread out over too few people, too many and GT ended up with too many high paid staff. The latter problem was easier to manage as they would then try and place the excess in positions with client company’s – they were less likely to lose clients if the Finance Director was an alumni.

Five people were recruited in the year above me. By the time I had been at GT a year there only two left. GT held a summer ball each year which was free to staff. The office’s senior partner, David Moore, always attended with a different, impossibly attractive, woman thirty years his junior. The rumours were that they were hired for the night. I declined to attend the first one, I said that the first-year exams were too close, the real reason was that nights out with the lads were a lot more fun.

The following Monday I came in to find Ian Osborn and Andy Flockton looking devastated. Ian was far older than most trainees at 33. He had a doctorate in biochemistry and said that he could only get grant funding in the UK, but no labspace and could get the labspace in the USA but no funding (or vice versa). The suspicion was that it was his miserable attitude that had limited his chances. He hated the work – at 33 with a Ph.D. and he was doing what we called “ticking and bashing” – the boring grunt work of auditing – checking that controls and transactions were accurate. Ian was vocal about his talents that were being ill-used.

Ian was not one of the popular team members, but my senior, Sue, had him on several teams that I was on too and had encouraged me to try and get on with him (Sue even dressed in skimpy outfits to try and cheer him up, not a management technique that is recommended). This particular morning Ian was monosyllabic as we sat in the office and then was collected by David Moore’s PA.

Another of the second year’s, Julie, spilled the beans. Ian and Andy had got totally plastered at the ball. Alcohol was a GT test – whether you could control yourself with a free bar and how you handled being drunk – being good at both was a qualification for partnership. They had both run riot around the venue, vandalising the tents and throwing drinks at people (including clients).

Two minutes later Ian returned to the office, picked up a bag and that was the last time I saw him. Andy was gone too, but he was relieved as he had decided it was not the career for him, but he was having trouble making the jump.

(Audit office)

One of the trainees from year above me had been allowed to transfer to the tax department for her second year. This was never, ever allowed. Life in the tax department was far more serene, picking up the information the audit teams had got and then meeting and corresponding with the tax offices. The tax staff worked regular hours, unlike the insane times we worked and rarely left the office, not having to travel all over East Anglia to get to work. So why had Caroline been allowed to do this and be treated so much better than anyone else ever was? She was Caroline Cadbury, part of the Cadbury family that owned the chocolate firm and owner of a chunk of the shares. There was an idea that if she was treated well enough GT may one day land Cadbury as a client.

The three people who stayed in touch after I was made redundant were all part of the administrative support team. Tracy Collett and I were the same age and she was far more relaxed than any members of the audit team. After she left GT she went round the world and we corresponded for several years before we lost touch. Sandy Button was our receptionist – she liked me because I was the only one of the audit team (she said) who treated her and her husband (who was a kind of odd job man) like normal people and actually talked to them.

Jan Hannaford was one of David Moore’s PAs. She succeeded Georgina who was very posh, but a bit wild and liked to Party. Jan was in her 30s and was very level-headed and competent. Her husband was a war zone photographer for The Sun and was rarely home, so she worked a lot. Jan and I both discovered Absolutely Fabulous before it was famous and she was really helpful to me after I was made redundant.

(Jan Hannaford)

Grant Thornton was about 75% female, but not partners and managers.

This is a group that reminds me of Grant Thornton. I like The Cult and thought about choosing Fatman by Southern Death Cult to prove my muso authenticity (SDC and Death Cult were earlier incarnations of the Cult). The best Cult album is Sonic Temple but this is the best track they did. Dumper performed it once or twice, but it was never a regular on the set.

She Sells Sanctuary

I’m Hearing Only Bad News

What does Africa mean to you? What do you think when you hear Africa?

Famine?

Dictatorships?

Poverty?

Corruption?

Perceptions count for a lot and particularly those that are embedded in someone’s mind at a young age. For my parents’ generation it is was the end of Empire and the emergence of a wave of dictators across the continent. For my generation it was the spectre of famine. Africans as victims, needing to be helped by the West.

First it is good to get an idea of how big Africa is. On a standard map it looks like Russia is bigger and the USA is the same size. This is due to how the standard Mercator projection puts a globe on a flat piece of paper. This means the further from the equator a country is the more it its size is inflated. This gives, Russia, the USA and Europe a massive overestimate of size, whereas Africa is barely affected. Africa is huge.

(this picture from Mercator Misconceptions shows how big countries really are).

If the European empires were so brilliant, why were African countries left in a condition where they were totally unready for independence. Some countries had as few as single figure numbers of graduates. Infrastructure only existed in as far as it serviced colonial aims like mining. Even country borders were a catastrophe. Like the Middle East the occupying powers drew straight lines on maps. It had no regard to historical countries, tribal borders or physical landmarks. This is why so many civil wars and conflicts have happened and continue to occur.

In the Cold War the continent was one of the proxy battlegrounds for the USA and the USSR. There was money available for weapons, but not for food or medicine. The worst examples of this were South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) which were ruled as apartheid states. The NATO powers saw them as a bulwark against communism and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to sanctions against these them both. When Rhodesia threw off minority white rule the UK was more interested in the rights of white property owners, who by definition had taken the land from the native Zimbabweans, (ironic considering the same people hate immigrants to the UK) than the poverty stricken black majority.

Loans were made to dictators which were embezzled and used to fund lavish lifestyles. Knowing this the loans continued to be made by Western banks. Some of the poorest countries in the world have been left without the projects that the loans were meant to fund and saddled with a debt burden, providing income to the banks for a huge number of years.

The problems of Africa are a legacy of European colonialism. Think about that next time there are refugees from Somalia or immigrants from Nigeria. Live 8 was a step in the right direction, but a debt amnesty is the only fair thing to do. At some stage in the future (Climate Change aside) African nations will be global superpowers.

This song was a hit while I was at University and I was realising how awful South Africa was.

Radio Africa