Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Some things are just more important

I sat down today intending to write a critical piece contrasting the latest recording of Do They Know It's Christmas with the 1984 original. I was going to talk about how bland the new version is compared with the old one, about how the almost egoless original made when they simply didn't know if it would work or not contrasts with the showbiz snippiness that manifested itself in the admittedly minor row over who got to sing "But tonight thank God it's them instead of you" in the new version. I was going to say that well, at least it wasn't as dreadful as the almost-forgotten Band Aid II recording from 1989. I was going to wish that they'd written a new song instead. I was going to say that ultimately, while the original still moves me every time I hear it, the new one didn't move me at all.

But my thoughts drifted, and I realised that rather than whining about what's fundamentally a well-intentioned effort to raise funds for places where they're needed it would be better to talk about something else. If you want snarky reviews of the new single, go Google. There are plenty of them out there, so let's not bother with wasting bytes on yet another one.

I was eleven when the original version of Do They Know It's Christmas was released. Live Aid happened a month after my twelfth birthday. As far as political awareness was concerned I didn't have much other than the idealism of the average twelve-year-old growing up in a pleasant middle-class environment. But I can remember sitting watching Live Aid and being happy that for once, the world was pulling together as individuals in an apolitical way to help people who needed help right now.

But now I'm older, and I'm a computer geek. I do UNIX consultancy at a daily rate which, although far cheaper than many others, is still pretty obscene by comparison with what the rest of the world has to live on. I live in London, and after I've paid tax on my daily rate it's enough to pay something like half my monthly rent. The money I have left over goes in the bank for me to pay myself with during lean times, where it gains interest. And that's about it.

Every so often I look at myself and think that there has to be something I can do to help out the vast majority of the world which is less fortunate than me. I have a nice flat in Surbiton and a job which (at least so far) pays far more than I really need to live on without even having to work full-time. I have clean water straight from the tap. I have affordable, safe and reliable food supplies available from the shops around the corner. If I get sick my GP's surgery is three minutes walk away, and if I get really sick I've got some of the best healthcare in the world available - at no end user cost - from the NHS. I'm pretty damn lucky. Virtually everybody who reads this page will be similiarly lucky to some extent. Some will be even luckier.

But there are billions of people who aren't so lucky. Billions of people who live in squalid slum conditions or have no home at all. Billions of people who have to walk miles to collect unsafe drinking water. Billions of people who live on starvation rations or other peoples' food waste if they get to eat at all. Billions of people with no access to healthcare due to it being simply not available or just unaffordable.

When you think about that, we're not that badly off, are we?

We like to pretend in the computer industry that we're impoverished and poorly paid. In the main, we're talking complete bullshit. For a lot of IT workers, "poor" simply means "it'll be a few months before I can afford a new Powerbook" or "I won't be able to buy a new iPod until next month". Sure, there are plenty of us for whom money is tight as well, but there are a lot more of us for whom it's really not, however much we like to pretend that it is.

Now, let's get down to business.

What I would love to see happen, and what I'd love to help make happen, is to encourage people in the computing and IT businesses - employees, contractors, consultants, consulting houses - to donate just one day's income in a coordinated effort on one day somewhere in the near-to-middling future. One lousy day's pay. That's all. If you can't really afford a day, fine - donate half a day or a couple of hour's pay. Every little helps, certainly, but a whole lot helps a lot more than a little. And, hey, you don't have to be a computer geek to contribute. Lawyers, plumbers, everyone's welcome.

Think about it. If 500 people donate £500, that's a quarter of a million quid. If 5000 people donate £250 that's £1,250,000. Anything more than that and we're starting to talk serious money. But why stop with pounds? The Internet's global. Throw in a few million US dollars and a bunch of yen and Euros and Aussie dollars and it would be possible to raise enough money to do our bit as an industry, enough to help make a real difference and be able to say "Hey, we helped to do that." Oh, yeah, and as this often persuades the self-employed to spend money: charitable donations are, I believe, exempt from tax in the UK through the Gift Aid scheme, and no doubt exempt in many other countries as well.

But what's the money to go on? The Band Aid model seems to work. There are places which need help right now, and a mixture of providing essential and immediate funding for relief agencies to purchase what they need to do their work and investment in longer-term projects aimed at helping people return to independent living while giving them something to make a living from seems like a good plan. Hey, if this was a computer geek-originated fund it might even be a good idea to fund grassroots IT initiatives in places where they aren't able to take access to computers and communications for granted - projects like this one, maybe. And even if there wasn't an immediate need for any money which was left over, it would earn a nice healthy rate of interest in the bank enabling it to help more people in the future when it was needed. Good deal, eh? Ultimately, the fund's financial details and accounts would be openly published on the net so that anyone who cared to look could check that they'd been used in a worthwhile manner.

Oh, yeah. The working title for the project - Geek Aid. It'd probably change to something less nerdy but dammit, Jim, I'm a computer geek, not a branding consultant.

I've got plenty of spare time at the moment. I spend far too much of it doing nothing. I'd love to be able to spend it doing something, so I'm happy to do some of the legwork for a project like this and investigate the necessary red tape. Anyone want to help? Most needed right now would be someone to design a website, and someone to host it, because my web skills ain't that good.

After all, if Premiership footballers can do it, so can we. And there are a whole lot more of us, even if we're not all quite so well paid.

Mike

PS: I'm not interested in hearing any of the following, so don't bother commenting if that's all you were going to say:

• "I wouldn't donate." - Okay, but I'd hope that others would.
• "This is all the fault of governments, and it's governments who should be helping." - Think that if you want, but I'd rather see a need and respond to it rather than just sulk because someone else hasn't.
• "It'll never work!" - What, you've tried it?
• "Someone tried this before, and it didn't work." - No worries. Even if we only make a few thousand quid it can be put to use.

PPS: To put my money where my mouth is - if this project comes off, I'll donate one day's worth at my undiscounted daily rate. Just to be clear, okay?

Posted by mpk at November 18, 2004 11:25 PM | TrackBack