RED strikes back at ‘costly’ claims

Paul Vallely at The Independent refutes claims made by advertising trade magazine Ad Age that Bono’s RED campaign spends more money on advertising than it raises for Africa.

“The money RED has raised means that some 160,000 Africans will be put on life-saving anti-retrovirals in the coming months, orphans are being fed and kept in school in Swaziland and a national HIV treatment and prevention programme has begun in Rwanda. Some 99 per cent of funds raised go directly to life-saving schemes.”

On the RED website, CEO Bobby Shriver also reacts to the article in Ad Age:

“Your article says that $18 million and soon to be $25 million (when we have completed our most recent accounting) is a “meager” amount. It’s five times the amount given to the Global Fund by the private sector in four years.”

The Joshua Tree’s powerful impact

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the release of The Joshua Tree, Andrew Collins looks back on the album and its powerful impact.

“But for an instance, U2 had the world in the palm of their hand. None of the irony that would dog them in the 90s, less of the piety that still puts people off them, and more of the wonder. They had such a profound, moving, mobilising, even politicising effect on the young, grant-assisted, long-haired me, I will probably always love them, like the old Stones fans love the Stones.”

Read the full review and enjoy more of BBC 6 Music’s trip down the memory lane.

Where were you when you heard it first?