egafd.com

It is inevitable that a sucessful rock band will make lots of money and I suppose you can do that whilst retaining your integrity and still call yourself an artist. It starts to become just a corporation though when the core thing you are about is money and music is just a means to that. I don't think U2 have quite got into the league of the Rolling Stones or the Spice Girls in terms of the thing just being a commerical, corporate entity. U2 have always refused to take commercial sponsorship for their tours because that has always been seen as the ultimate sell-out for an artist. We haven't seen U2 doing ads for Pepsi-Cola or similar - so they are not in the total sell-out, corporate, commercial world like Britney Spears is. Nor have we seen pictures of Vespa motor-scooters on their concert tickets as a way of them trying to earn more money from a tour. I think they are, sadly, moving slightly down that path though when band profits start to get invested in things like Facebook as a way of trying to turn wealth into super-wealth.

He apparently had a personal fortune of over ?100m, the same as the other three members of U2 - although this is what the newspapers speculate so how do we really know - but he was certainly already a very very rich man. Quite why he needs to become a billionaire is beyond me. He will see no change in his lifestyle at all, everything he will now do he could have done anyway and all that extra money will be of no use to him.

I remember the Achtung Baby/ZooTV phase of U2, I saw them on that tour at Wembley Stadium in 1993. They started playing around with mass-media, consumerism and so on during that time but, as I said in an earlier comment, they refused commercial sponsorship for that tour as such a thing has always been seen as the ultimate sell out for an artist.

Damien Hirst may invest his money in all sorts of things, I dont know much about what he does with his cash - but I don't think his kind of art and music type art is the same thing in this regard. When a band gets their tour sponsored by a soft drinks company, they start doing adverts for a high street brand, or band profits are invested in frozen orange juice manufacturers that are listed on Wall Street, it feels to me that is a sell out of their integrity - more so than if a millionaire painter bought some properties with his money. I don't know why, but it does.

I agree that tax dodging whilst telling people poorer than you to give to causes is ridiculous.

On the Bono shades issue, I remember you saying on here before how you knew someone who had been to his pad and that Bono apparently wears the shades indoors too. I remember commenting at the time how, from what I have read, he has something wrong with his eyes and has to wear them. Apparently if someone takes his photo he will see the flash in front of him for the rest of the day, hence the permanent wearing of the shades.

Regarding The Edge and his black hat, he has been donning that since about 2001. He used to have differnt head gear for every phase of the band: when an album/tour phase ended they would disappear for a couple of years then re-emerge with The Edge having differnt head gear for that next phase. However this never happened when they re-emerged any time later from then on - it's been the black hat ever since baby!

This just applies to 'public Edge' though, there have been photos of him when he has been papped whilst off-duty and he is wearing something else. I've also seen one paprazzi pic of him without anything on his head and he is extremely bald!

I've always thought that charities should publish exactly where all the cash goes. If the public knew that vast amounts went in salaries and expenses they may be lets inclined to give so this might make the charities give a greater proprtion to the causes.

I've always thought that charities should publish exactly where all the cash goes. If the public knew that vast amounts went in salaries and expenses they may be lets inclined to give so this might make the charities give a greater proprtion to the causes.


Thats quite an inflammatory post there Max.

Suggesting that charities pay out vast amounts to salaries and expenses really negates the point of a charity in the first place. Have you any links to support your claim because from where I'm sitting it looks like an excuse that people use to not donate.

Thats like saying Live Aid and Chyildren In Need is just a way to rip money off of the public and that in itself is criminal

Just click on the link that Jimslip attached, three posts above your comment. It claims only ONE PERCENT of the money given to a charity Bono is involved in went to the cause itself. I am not suggesting Bono is out to rip anyone off, I am sure he is in it for very noble reasons, he might be just a bit naive to think most of it ends up where the givers think it does. Maybe he is only peripherally involved. I also remember reading about a charity located in Scotland once where only about 3% (three percent) of the money given went to the cause. The rest was salaries, office costs, advertising, and so on. I can't remember it's name but I genuinely remember reading that.

I am in no position to refute those claims but then, just because its in the New York Post doesn't make me believe it either.

I am very distrustful of the media and if a charity was blatantly lining its own pockets then I would think they would do it in a way it couldnt be audited to prove they earned that much.

I cant see how any charity could get away with paying 99% on costs and salaries. That means they woul dbe profiting more than a company would and you can bet like of our media would have a field day but yet the New York Post clinched that exclusive???

The thing about the media is that it makes sheep out of everyone that believes what they write.

Its in print therefore it must be true. Is that how it works?

Max,

Don't know if you have read the Daily Mail story that Jim Slip has provided a link to.

It's worthwhile trying to differentiate between:

groups that are raising money for example, disaster relief, where obviously it is important that as much money as possible goes to the victims.

groups that are more campaigning groups on issues and trying to raise awareness as opposed to working on the ground handing out aid.

The organisation referred to, fits into the latter group.

There's a lovely bit of Daily Mail vomit when having stuck the knife in and done what they can to discredit the organisation, they state

"While the organisation's gameplan has never been direct handouts on the ground, many who admire the Irish rock legend may be surprised by the figures."

The ONE group stated
"'We don't provide programmes on the ground. We're an advocacy and campaigning organisation.' and that it took no money from the public and that most of its funding came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

I assume that since the Gates Foundation has a long and illustrious record of handing out dosh to umpteen different types of projects, they presumably knew exactly what the money was going to be spent on and what the aims and the objectives of the organisation are.

It's not a precise analogy, but it is a bit like slagging off the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament for not spending large amounts of money they might have got in the past on radiation victims, instead of campaigning and lobbying.

I'm not qualified to talk about the finances of individual charities, or indeed, what the charities in question actually do verses what they claim to do (to offer practical aid or to just inform). And I certainly don't think that people should stop giving charity. What I do think, however, is that it's very hypocritical to lecture others about giving, when holding on to such vast sums of money yourself.

I don't mean a rich person is a hypocrite because he doesn't give all his money to charity. I'm talking about super rich people, people who have tens or even hundreds of millions. They could (while keeping millions back for their own future) give incredibly huge donations to worthwhile charities (as, I admit, some do) and not even feel it. Imagine if you could, just by writing a cheque, end some huge humanitarian disaster. Billionaires, surely, could do just that. But some at least don't. Instead, it seems to me that they just bolster their already god-like public images by talking a lot about these problems (causes, diseases, disasters, etc), while actually giving very little.

I'm not saying that just because someone is rich, they should be forced to give enormous sums to charity. But you'd think that if they cared as much as they say they do, then they would.