The Medici?.. More like the Ceauşescus!

The Barbarians are not just at the gates, but they are within the city walls. Furthermore, they have entered City Hall and they sit in Parliament. God knows, someone elected them. For them culture is a visit to a supercasino or an international sporting event; An EU funded extravaganza with three tenors; Something to be subsidised and patronised (with patronage, I mean, rather than excessive praise, but they like to do that too). A politician likes to bestow grants, because it makes him feel like a Medici, and because it provides a ribbon-snipping opportunity. If there is no ribbon to snip then it can't be culture!

Real culture, however, these savages are doing their best to destroy - by draining it of all that is joyful. How we live, what we eat, how we sing and dance, our history. There is hardly an aspect of our existence that isn't made worse by their interference, legislation and bad management. Here are just a few examples:

Licensing of all music and dance events - Health & safety. A few drinkers watching a guitarist in one pub is, apparently, more of a threat than a group of yobs watching Sky Sports in the next. Did Mr Murdoch draft this law?
Routemaster buses decommissioned - Health & safety and disability rights.
Propaganda displayed on Nuremberg style banners - They hang from lampposts and declare 'Make Britain Proud' or 'We are all LondONErs'. I'm not a lundwunner! ..and, looking about, I'd bet some of us aren't even Londoners.
Gilbert Scott telephone boxes replaced by glass urinoires - Hygiene.
Allotments and playing fields sold to developers - They say that we should keep fit. That means at the private leisure centre.
Orchards and hedgerows uprooted - Economics. Where English orchards ARE being replanted it is no thanks to our legislators.
Engineering companies closed down - Planning laws and health & safety. "What's the risk assessment for this talcum powder?".
Street drinkers chased from town centres - They may be untidy, but do they cause more fights than pub drinkers?
Station waiting rooms closed - For our comfort and convenience.
Public conveniences closed - See telephone boxes (above).
Encouragement of supermarkets and discouragement of independent businesses - That is why our food tastes like cardboard. See closure of allotments (above).
Political support for gambling - Regeneration or degeneration? Public/private partnership with the mafia.
The National Curriculum - What do you expect when one philistine after another is put in charge of Education! Every gardener knows that the best way to make a plant flourish is.. ..to keep measuring it?
Reduction in library budgets - Local libraries have sold most of their interesting stock. Books have been replaced by DVDs of Hollywood films. Feltham Library, for example, is now called Skills Suite and includes a wetplay area and a Teenage Zone. It boasts of having "100s of books". I should hope so! I have hundreds of books and I would expect any public library to have tens of thousands of them.
Advertising space for sale everywhere - Roundabouts sponsored by funeral directors, town 'Welcome' signs sponsored by insurance companies. Why not sell space on the war memorial, perhaps, to advertise the local massage parlour?

One begins to feel like a stranger in one's own country - and let me make it clear that this feeling is nothing to do with the skin colour of one's fellow bus passengers and is everything to do with the way our leaders have systematically destroyed our culture. Everywhere these traitors are ruining our lives, but I will not call for a bloody revolution in which they will be separated from their heads. It is more polite to issue a pamphlet. That is the British way. Right then! I'll call it something like "KulturKampf: A ten year programme for leadership" and I'll sell copies (via this website) for £1.50 each. It will be better than that rubbish that New Labour was selling - much more expensively - before the last election.

[Note: Anglo-Saxon countries have traditionally rejected the idea of employing a Minister of Culture. The very mention of it conjures up in one's mind a swarthy - and oily - foreigner in a cream suit; probably envisioned at the opening of a gold encrusted operahouse, sipping Johnny Walker Black Label while all around his countrymen are starving. Or we may think of the French. For them Culture is a political weapon, and, while we may secretly admire their sense of occasion and their bold political gestures, those of us who have read 'Clochemerle' can only think of the urinal built as a "shining example of the superiority of a progressive town council". Once we laughed at such Gallic pretentions, but we have learned (at great cost) that a special talent is required to successfully execute the grand political gesture. Talent that, evidently, our own leaders lack. Our Clochemerle urinal is the Millennium Dome - a lot more expensive and a lot less useful! We should have known, when the post of Minister of Culture was first suggested, that our government had started out on the road that would lead to compulsory identity cards, parenting classes and the Citizenship Ceremony. Economically they may be Thatcherites, but socially they owe more to Stalin. But Dr John Reid is another story...]

Thought for the day:

Once, when David Miliband (as Schools Minister) visited a music class, he picked up a guitar and played one jazz chord that he had learned for the occasion.

When visiting a politician, then, it must be customary to tell one lie that you have learned for the occasion.

History Today

Spiritual Healers:

Miracle Healing Power Thunder!

» more...

London Street Cries:

The many ways of selling fruit at a pound a bowl.

» more...

Arti Belle & Brute

Euston Road:

Where bad sculpture goes to die.

» more...

St Mary Woolnoth:

Can't see the Woolnoth for the CCTV.

» more...

Sleeve Note Hell:

Do you know worse than these?

» more...

Music & Maths:

Pi to 31 decimal places.... ..How to be (secretly) romantic... ..and why Osama Bin Laden doesn't need to advertise on ebay.

» more...