A Bloody Nose

And here we are, yet again. Destiny?

It's time- best not leave it too long- to start gearing up for another Red Nose Day. Schools, as has become another British tradition, will be joyfully ditching the National Curriculum- leastways, in a number of educational establishments, it'll be severely subjugated. All manner of really-quite-comfortably-off celebrities will be interrupting that primeval drive towards another 'home,' another million, another (bigger, faster, more-modern, swisher) yacht, car, pair of dark glasses, in order to attempt to remind the nation that, "There are individuals far worse off than yourselves."

It's been twenty-five years, you might be surprised to learn, since the Red Nose Appeal kicked off and started to roll back those pernicious evils of poverty. And absolutely millions of pounds have been raised by, for example, Tony Blair featuring in a TV sketch with Catherine Tate, Gary Barlow 'climbing' Mount Kilimanjaro, and Bono, Bob Geldof and Ricky Gervais faking, ostensibly for comic effect, an African poverty encounter. All manner of British school kids, including many of those who often arrive at school without having had a proper breakfast, will be pestering their mothers to bake red cakes and then paying over the odds to eat these self-same items.


Thank you to rsambrook

I fully expect that this year, as has also almost become another British tradition, the country will be striving to again surpass its best to date, hoping to exceed even the towering one-hundred-and-eight-million pounds raised in 2011. Since 1993 the doughty British-fund-raiser has repeatedly been more than equal to the task of bettering all past efforts. At the Red Nose launch, in 1988, a whopping fifteen-million was raised, and by 2011 the annual total achieved had astonishingly increased by more than sevenfold. Mind-blowing! Just think about the size of the dent, in the flanks of world poverty, that this kind of sum should create.


And also to Marcus Vegas

Who amongst us could possibly predict, with any degree of certainty, that 2013 will (or won't) be equal to such an immense challenge as to continue this magnificent trend, to surpass that one-hundred-and-eight million? Given that the likes of Osborne, Cameron, JC and Clegg are busying themselves with a poorly-disguised orchestrated-extension to the current recession- the very, very best circumstances under which to swiftly transfer immense sums of money from the threadbare pockets of the poorest and into the well-nourished hands of the most wealthy- we might easily assume that 2013's Red Nose Day will perhaps fall short and buck such recent trends. But the proud British fund-raiser has a well-deserved reputation for defying the odds. Either way, mid-March will be revealing the spoils. Fingers crossed!

It is an undeniable fact that the presented face of the Red Nose Appeal is as an aspirational thrust towards that of a better world. Yet a limited analysis of global trends, in an ostensibly rabidly-monetarist world, I would contest, will reveal that the 'needs'- those hoping to be met by any funds raised- will be ever set to far outstrip any level of successful fund raising. The Yin and the Yang of the global marketplace, if you please. The imperfectly 'interdependent' opposing faces upon the global coin.


Also to Giuseppe Nicoloro

Involving a great deal less (mis)interpretation and guesswork, allow me to adopt a somewhat Nostradamian pose and to here predict that, should the Red Nose Appeal continue to raise funds, with such increased vigour, for another twenty-five years, that global poverty will forever be there, festering to thwart so much of its efforts.

Having personally been involved, annually and in a variety of guises, with Red Nose activities, my aim is not entirely to knock the event. Certainly it is my experience that the vast majority of those involved work without any expectation of reward and with the most honourable of intents, often well beyond what is reasonable to have expected or hoped of them. Mine is thus, more, a 'polite' questioning of the climate, within which the Red Nose Appeal 'hopes' or 'expects' to succeed.

What I fear we have created here is a paradox, a paradox that I will now attempt to unravel. Although, if you can, perhaps, recall the general thrust of the humour in the earlier-referenced Gervais et al sketch, you may already be more or less up to speed. It is curious, is it not- and more than a touch disconcerting- just how seamlessly the beneficiaries of such huge global inequality appear to have managed to incorporate any reference to this self-same issue into the Red Nose comic sketch? Watch the sketch and you'll see what I mean...


Thank you ell brown

Although politicians and 'celebrities' alike appear loathe to point out such an oversight, there is a massive flaw within the very concept of such a fund-raising event as the Red Nose Appeal. It is almost as if the 'aspirational' and aesthetically 'perfect' edifice that has been constructed has completely omitted to acknowledge the shifting sands that lie in the stead of the required foundations. Those most over-eager to be equated with the appeal (Tony, Bono, Gary Barlow, such like, with their dubious tax arrangements) appear universally to have elected not to question the basic premise of an unequal global market economy. Yet it would be this very same global economy of unequal division of wealth that has been ostensibly responsible for the two major and interdependent contributing factors to current global poverty.

Firstly, and most regularly highlighted, there is the growing consequence of escalating world poverty, whereby many are underpaid, starving, inadequately fed or housed, unable to acquire even the basic requirements for a minimal standard of living. Secondly, and yet painfully under-analysed, there are the entirely interconnected recipients of uber-volumes of global wealth and property (that would be yachts and cars and landmasses and top restaurant access and monetary wealth and superfluous possession and, and, and etc). Despite (perhaps as a consequence of) recent trends we have seen these wealthy-individual-'requirements' spiralling ever further heavenwards. And this in an entirely finite world, don't forget!

Upon the global monetary elastic band- my chosen analogy- with the over-zealous acquisitors ranged at one extreme and the might-not-live-another-day starving ranged at the other, the decision makers (by necessity far closer to the end of privilege) continue to argue that global competition benefits the whole. The rest of us will find ourselves dotted at various points between, encouraged to endorse the actions of the most acquisitive through our own enforced means of achieving the best standards of living within our grasp. Living the capitalist dream! Or, perhaps, suffering the consequences of the capitalist nightmare? Who can honestly say?


Exactly, w3y

The aim of the grasping few will be to stretch the band, to increase the distance between themselves and the rest. The aim of the many should be to ease these extremes far closer together, to reduce the distance between ourselves and those who circumstance has permitted to wallow in accumulated wealth. The ever-fluctuating line that separates those who may currently eat well from those who may not is merely a consequence of the global market. But, in this decidedly finite world, the greater the divide the thinner the remaining wealth will be stretched. Consequence, increased global poverty, crocodile tears and far too much TV exposure for the acquisitive.

"So shoot me, I'm a rock star!" Too concise, Bono; too concise and selective by far! You are also a major factor in the cause of global poverty and starvation, and child exploitation (cheaper produce equates to greater profits for share holders). Cry those crocodile tears, Mr Bono, when you should next jet off to Africa, but, if you think you're more solution than cause then you're also horrendously deluded.

I'm not entirely certain that I'm comfortable with even the 'horrendously deluded' excuse. Me? I think you're entirely the hypocrite that you've been painted, Mr Bono.

So, where next for Red Nose Day? More of the same, I should imagine.