Radiohead's Thom Yorke slams G8 failure on debt

Radiohead's Thom Yorke has used his band's website to launch his most bitter assault yet on Western political leaders' failure to combat growing Third World debt.

In an all-out attack on the G8 leaders (premiers of the world's richest nations) whose summit in Okinawa on July 23 backtracked on their previous limited promises on debt cancellation, Yorke fumed: "How will you sleep...? What will you say to your children?"

He also launched a stinging attack on their decision to prioritise the digital divide at the expense of lessening the burden of debt.

His web page features a picture of a laptop on fire with the words “This is worth nothing until you drop the debt.” The picture came from protests by Jubilee 2000 campaigners at the Okinawa Summit.

Yorke's angry missive beneath the picture reads:

"You can't eat the ******* web. This is free market killing. You have no-one to blame but yourselves and you know it. What kind of future are you expecting? You expecting to walk away, hands clean, white gloves? You expecting the trouble to cease? How will you sleep? When things turn nasty how will you explain yourself? What will you say to your children?"

Yorke has been one of the most vocal of all high-profile music stars in his bid to push western leaders to address the debt crisis. He has frequently pointed out that though many of the debts have been repaid, crippling interest charges are preventing some of the world's poorest nations from developing.

Earlier this month he joined U2's Bono, Ewan McGregor, Ali G and many other celebrities in calling for the public to send an email to leaders asking them to use the G8 summit to move from rhetoric to actual delivery of debt cancellation.