Ed Vaizey, the culture spokesman of a party long on political ambition but short on policy, must have been delighted with this week’s bright idea. A Conservative government, he has said, would consider forcing the BBC to sell off its Radio 1 franchise and waveband to the private sector. This profoundly silly and wrong-headed idea… Continue reading It’s all too easy to gang up on Radio 1
Read moreIt must sometimes be frustrating to be the director of the Edinburgh International Festival. Throughout August, the headlines tend to be about comedians, buskers, contortionists and body-piercers, with the Fringe rather perversely pushing the concerts, dance, opera and drama of the main festival into the wings. The injustice of the situation seems to have got… Continue reading An aversion to seriousness runs deep
Read moreThere have been problems on the moors in advance of the Glorious Twelfth, today’s opening of the grouse-shooting season. Successive damp summers have accelerated the spread of the heather beetle, which destroys the birds’ habitat. There have been worries that the rare and beautiful bird of prey, the hen harrier, has been unsportingly killing grouse… Continue reading Why Britain can’t shake off its snobbery
Read moreIt has been an excellent summer so far for the Smug Marrieds. Those grim representatives of connubial bliss, invented by Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones during the 1990s, will have been delighted to read the various pro-matrimony reports and surveys of recent weeks. First, Iain Duncan Smith re-affirmed the Tories’ commitment to the institution of marriage,… Continue reading Marriage isn’t always the ideal state
Read moreThe Queen has asked a simple but pertinent question of the nation’s economists. Visiting the London School of Economics at the end of last year, she wondered out loud why no one had managed to foresee this “awful recession”. The economists did what economists do on these occasions: they set up a seminar. Its conclusions,… Continue reading Matters of interest for Her Majesty
Read moreThe best way to control people, as any competent dictator will know, is to get them to police themselves. No citizen is more comprehensively cowed and disempowered than one who believes himself to be at the mercy of other ordinary people. Britain, not a totalitarian state, is nonetheless on a steep learning curve when it… Continue reading The mad democracy of snooping
Read moreChilling with the kids at the Latitude Festival this weekend, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Ben Bradshaw, looked extraordinarily relaxed for someone whose ministry had just dealt a hammer blow to musical expression in the UK. Participating in a packed debate about media, Bradshaw had been amiable, almost liberal, in his… Continue reading Where are the guitar riots and accordian assaults?
Read moreIf only modern Britain were more like Wootton Bassett. That thought must have passed through many minds since the first press and TV accounts reported, a matter of weeks ago, how a small Wiltshire town has taken upon itself the sad task of honouring those killed in action when their bodies arrive home. Every time… Continue reading The new British way of mourning
Read moreThe soundtrack to our lives contains certain noises which exist primarily to reassure the more vulnerable citizens of middle Britain that old values and traditions live on. The shipping forecast, eager middle-class voices singing “Jerusalem” on the Last Night of the Proms, the Queen’s Speech: the content of all these things is unimportant beside the… Continue reading ‘Thought For The Day’ has had its day
Read moreThe Government’s pledge to use the London Olympics as a way of encouraging lazy Britons to take exercise grows ever more ambitious. Last week, we heard that frisbee-throwing, baton-twirling and arm-wrestling would be eligible for government grants. Now a more traditional form of exercise is being promoted to teenagers. “Health promotion experts advocate five portions… Continue reading Does sex need to be encouraged?
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