Reporter THERESA ROBSON took part in Saturday's "human chain" against Third World Debt with worshippers from throughout East Lancashire. Here is her personal view:
OK, I hold my hand up. I'm the wally who got up at 6.30am on Saturday to travel to Birmingham to hold hands with a stranger for two minutes.
Why? It is claimed that for every £1 given to poor countries, £3 is paid in interest on debts.
Worshippers and protesters taking part in the "human chain" - 60,000 of them from across the country - were calling for a one-off cancellation of the backlog of unpayable debts to mark the millennium.
While the leaders of the eight most powerful countries in the world, called the G8, were taking part in their annual economic conference, people in indebted poor countries were dying from treatable or preventable disease; children were starving and families were being denied their basic needs of sanitation and clean, running water.
Britain, one of the G8, was meanwhile putting the final touches to the most expensive, nationalist project ever undertaken by a country, the £750million Millennium Dome.
The cost of the Dome would cancel the entire debts of the eight countries ranked least developed by the United Nations, so is it any wonder people feel uneasy?
That's why I got up at 6.30am on Saturday to travel to Birmingham to hold hands with a stranger for two minutes.
Worshippers from churches in Clitheroe, Whalley, Burnley and Rossendale felt exactly the same and, in the words of one: "If our little protest doesn't do the trick, well, we'll just have to run it by them again - at Downing Street!"
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