Lord of the Rings star backs poverty march
Movie star Billy Boyd took to the streets of Scotland’s capital today to encourage as many people as possible to attend the Make Poverty History rally this weekend.
The Lord of the Rings actor said he was confident that the Edinburgh event, which aims to highlight suffering in the world’s poorest countries, would force the G8 leaders to sit up and take notice.
The rally and march will come ahead of the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Perthshire, from July 6-8.
Boyd told the Scottish Press Association: “We don’t have the chance to vote on these things, so we have to come out on the streets to say that 30,000 children can’t be allowed to die every day. It’s an outrage.
“If the people are outraged in the way that I am, then we have to come out on the streets and we have to say ‘this can’t be allowed to go on’.”
Boyd, whose latest film On a Clear Day, also starring Peter Mullan and Brenda Blethyn, is shortly due for release, said he was “optimistic” about the will of the G8 leaders to tackle global poverty.
“There’s such overwhelming support for something to be done that I think the world leaders know that the people of their countries will not stand by and let nothing happen for much longer,” the Scots actor said.
“There’s a chance that a generation can make a change and I think we have that chance here – with this generation.
“We want to get as many people as we can out on the streets of Edinburgh and try and show the world leaders that we understand what’s going on with poverty and that we can’t allow it to happen any longer.”
Boyd used the Museum of Childhood, on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, to highlight the world's high child poverty death toll.
Comrie Saville-Ferguson, an eight-year-old pupil at the city’s Stockbridge Primary School, said: “There are other people in the world as old as me but they are not like me because they are poor and go to bed hungry.
“I think the G8 should sort this problem out on July 6.”
Angela O’Hagan, of Oxfam, said the public should be outraged that 30,000 children were dying every day from “preventable poverty”.
“It is an immoral waste of human life and potential which cannot be allowed to continue,” she said.
“The good news however is that this Saturday we can all do something to bring that waste of young life to an end.”
