17.1.22 England's Dreaming

I was listening to a podcast 'from The Word' earlier. It's the first podcast I ever really listened to, dating back to the days when 'The Word' was the best music magazine on the market (and clearly aimed at a demographic that could best be summed up as... well, me) and its editors David Hepworth and Mark Ellen - late of Q, Smash Hits, The Old Grey Whistle Test and presenting Live Aid thereby being in the room at the moment when Bob Geldof genuinely didn't say, "Give us the fucking money" moved into the then new world of talking about things in a format that could be consumed when the listener fancied it.

So it's basically been running a long time. And this week's edition covered the idea of National Anthems and could they possibly be a little more up beat? They posited pieces of music that might possibly be more uplifting than the current dirge and may connect more to the general public than the glorification of a person we'll never encounter in the real world that we have to live in (my words, not theirs. 

They put forward The Shadows' Wonderful Land, the theme tune to Pick Of The Pops and, in the spirit of Billy Connolly's decades old suggestion that God Save The Queen be replaced by the theme tune to The Archers because it would make us all feel infinitely better about ourselves.

Obviously, if we're looking for sensible suggestions then the answer is William Blake's Jerusalem. Possibly as delivered by Billy Bragg:

An anthem that's accepted as being socialist in nature and reflects a country rather than a ruler? Go on, I'm having that.

But. The reason for this conversation? That Tory MP last week (and I think we all know how I feel about Tories by now) demanding that the BBC play the National Anthem at the end of every night's broadcasting.

Add that to their recent flag mania (the school round the corner from us suddenly sprouted a union flag in the grounds which basically disgusted me - it's nothing to do with country, it's patriotism as 'the last refuge of the scoundrel' - is that Kipling? Orwell? Feels like it must be one of them. Hold on, I'll actually check this...

No. It's Samuel Johnson, as reported (as most of his comments were) by Boswell, whoever Boswell was - this really isn't something I was taught in school at any point.

Though he wasn't actually talking about patriotism as a thing, as a concept: he was talking about the specific dependency on patriotism by William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham and Prime Minister (Pitt The Elder, that's the bit we were definitely taught. 

A British PM hiding behind a false version of patriotism? Sure I've heard that concept somewhere else.

Anyway, I had a long ramble about where I stand on monarchy planned but I've got real work to do (extra moments to add to The Comeback Special for the new production - give everybody who's already seen it some reward for seeing it again, make it do different things - and Daisy's at the vets at 4.45 for her first needles so that's going to be fun). I may come back to the monarchy at some point - and my basic take is "I'm not overly arsed but if the Queen can't remove from power a party that's clearly destroying the country then what's the point?" Naive, I know, but that's my current emotional reading of the organisation.

In the meant time, this is the thought I want to encompass with this particular meander: if the Tories want the BBC to end every day's broadcasting with God Save The Queen - in the moments when they're not telling the BBC that they're going to cease any public funding so that they can make Murdoch, Dacre et al happier - the Newsnight got it right last time they tried to pull this pointless shit.