'When Dead Aid is Dead Fashionable'

Did anyone happen to see Tatler's June edition, page 49? It was the usual Tatler spread: people standing around and smiling at the camera, looking very pleased with themselves, many of them with hands clamped around large tumblers of white wine. This was the 'Party Scene' feature.

You could be forgiven for thinking they were celebrating something. Lord de Rothschild's birthday? A minor royal's engagement? A polo match? Something, anything, to do with Cartier? Actually, the publication of a book called 'Dead Aid', by Zambian Dambisa Moyo.

I doubt I'm the only one who thinks there's something rather outrageous about all these people getting together like this to mark the publication of a book which has such a devastating message - if all they're going to do is smile and say cheese. Or eat plenty of it.

The book's thesis is simple. Aid to Africa isn't working. Aid to Africa is actually Making Things Worse. It's making Africans poorer, it's slowing economic growth.

Just how much aid are we talking about here? $300 billion since 1970.

That makes the title of this feature, 'Money talks', particularly difficult to take. The point is, money doesn't always talk. At least, not in the way you want it to.

I understand the book is needed. And I understand the book needs to be promoted. But if these people are going to do no more than smile for Tatler, if they don't seriously engage with the issue and work to find legitimate ways of improving the lives of people in African countries, then all they're doing is using the book, using African poverty, using aid's failure, to promote themselves.

It's not enough just to have your photo taken.

So what are you doing about African aid, Mr Jamie Allsopp?

What are you doing, Mr Lucas Wurfbain?

What are you doing, Miss Josephine Daniel? Mrs Dorian Prosdocimi?