[patsylimerick]

No, I don't agree. What he does with his own finances is nothing different from what most millionaires and billionaires do all over the world to avoid giving the taxman half of what they have. It's probably not commendable, but who of us would give the taxman more than we actually have to?
In relation to using charity to promote himself; well he doesn't have to promote himself, does he? He was HUGE before he ever became vocal on world poverty. He is admirably well versed on global economics and geo politics which is very refreshing in the general run of celeb charity divas. The man has a brain.

Finally, if he was just a rockstar and didn't lobby for action on global poverty, would anyone give a shoite where he holds his bank accounts? Erm, no. They wouldn't. He is the perfect example of someone who doesn't have to do this. He has an incredibly successful international music career, a family (a wife he's been with since he was 17, by the way, how refreshing) and a hell of a lot of friends who universally speak highly of him. He doesn't have to give a ****, but he does. How he can be the subject of such vitriolic criticism in a celebrity world almost completely peopled in 2011 by self-serving, vacuous, greedy, greedy superficial numpties, it baffles me how HE is the target.

The logic appears to be; if he was an abjectly stupid and avaricious celebrity - as so many of them are, that would be fine - because then he wouldn't be a hypocrite. Once more, I feel like I inhabit an alternate universe.

Also, as I mentioned his wife Ali, she has been a tireless advocate for the sick and abandoned children of Chernobyl for some 25 years. She's a stunningly beautiful woman married to a superstar who is only ever seen in public when she is advocating, eloquently and modestly on their behalf.

Would that all the 'smug, hypocritical twats' of the world were like these two.