So why has it taken the world so long to act?Critics suggest that the West did not start giving until it could see pictures of dying babies on television Maybe that is true. Now, the investment in each human existence is $80. How, we ask ourselves, could this catastrophe have been unfolding during all the time that the Make Poverty History campaign gathered pace? The first warnings of impending disaster for Niger, the second poorest country in the world, came last October, after drought and locusts had destroyed last year's crops. Six months ago, it would have cost a dollar a day to save each starving person from death. So you tell me - what use, in times of conflagration, is a Mayor who would rather fan the flames than put them out? More from Howard Jacobson. This summer's fashion for charity wristbands appears to be on the wane. The white bands of the Make Poverty History campaign were ubiquitous a few weeks ago, but I haven't laid eyes on one for days. Are these abandoned accessories merely the latest victims of style's fickle progress? Or have people become uncomfortable with them, after the news that malnourished children in Niger have coloured-coded wristbands stapled on nice and tightly, so that their mothers aren't tempted to cheat and get extra food aid? The bands are needed because the crisis in Niger is so acute now that food aid needs to be intense and rationed Mere starvation won't get a baby into a feeding centre Babies have to be near to death to qualify.

And those who would not bother to distinguish between them as devils anyway now have Livingstone's sanction for their loathing. What does Livingstone want? The battle to be joined on Oxford Street?In his Singapore speech, Livingstone numbered Jews among those who comprised his threatened earthly paradise of many faiths Three weeks on, they are the reason for the threat Not Israelis, Jews. What is most alarming about these words, coming from a Mayor, is their divisiveness Israelis vs Palestinians have now become Jews vs Muslims. And after all, you can get on with the business of administering the capital, sorting out the congestion charge and so on, without being a particular friend of Israel.Since the bombings on the London Underground, however, the ill will has, as it were, spilled out on to the streets.

Speaking on Channel 4 News, Livingstone pitted "young Jewish boys in this country" against "young Muslim boys in this country", arguing that he was unable to see why the former can join the Israeli army and "end up killing many Palestinians", while the latter, wanting to defend his Palestinian "brothers and sisters", is "branded as a terrorist".Leave alone this brain-dead interpretation of who goes where to do what - the "killing" on the one side as against the "defending" on the other, the libellous imputation that the Israeli army has no function but to slaughter indiscriminately; leave alone the slide into moral equivalence, which makes whoever imposes authority a terrorist, and thus a London policeman identical to the bomber he hunts. Doubly treasonable in someone charged with the responsibility of protecting us.In the matter of Israel, Livingstone has for so long been incapable of accuracy or impartiality - now likening elected governments to terrorists, now inviting sheikhs to tea who consider even unborn Israelis legitimate targets of the bomber - that we take his ill will as a sort of unguarded eccentricity Oh, that's just Ken. It is a species of treason, it seems to me, to embrace the reasoning of your enemies when that reasoning leads ineluctably to your destruction. He is of course entitled as a private individual to believe what he believes, though even a private individual should think twice before making political capital out of other people's tragedies But Ken Livingstone is not a private individual.