Geldof offers to house four migrant families

Bob Geldof says Europe's response to the current migrant crisis makes him "sick", and has offered to accommodate four refugee families in his UK residences.

Speaking ahead of a performance with the Boomtown Rats at this weekend's Electric Picnic festival, the musician said he feels "profound shame" at a situation which has seen many die in their desperate attempts to flee war and strife, while thousands of others have been denied the opportunity to transit to their intended destinations in western Europe.

As such, he told RTÉ's Dave Fanning that he and his wife Jeanne are willing to allow three families to live in the couple's house in Kent, and another in their London flat.

“I can’t stand what is happening, I cannot stand what it does to us. The bollocks we talk about our values is complete nonsense, once it comes home to roost we deny those values, we betray ourselves but those values are correct and it happens time and time and time again. We are better than this.

“Late last night I couldn’t get my head around this... I started banging out this piece and I said ‘ok, let’s take on now, let’s put our money where our mouth is’. So me and Jan would be prepared to take three families immediately in our place in Kent and a family in our flat in London and put them up until such a time as they can get going and get a purchase on the future.”

The singer has over recent decades developed a reputation for being something of a moral crusader, and was the main instigator behind the famous Live Aid concerts in 1985 which raised money and awareness for people suffering from extended drought and famine in Africa.

He insisted that he is an economic migrant having moved to Britain to pursue his own dreams as a teenager, and says the current crisis is a seminal moment in world history which will continue to be discussed centuries from now.

“I look at it with profound shame and it’s a monstrous betrayal of who we are and what we wish to be. We are in a moment now which will be discussed and impacted upon in 300 years’ time, a fundamental shift in the way the world has worked over the last 600 years.

"When people are poor they move. I am an economic migrant. Britain accepted me and let me get on with it, I couldn't do it in Ireland which made me very bitter towards Ireland, but very grateful to the British people.

"For 30 years I've been dealing with refugees. Last year I was on the border of Somalia and Ethiopia with the refugees from the Somali war. All of this is happening now, we must have the politics and the humanity to deal with it. It makes me sick and a concert won't do it."