Remember Me

I spent last weekend in Nottingham. It turned out to be a strange couple of days. I was very happy, of course, to meet up again with people who I haven’t seen for so long. However, it was also rather sad, for reasons I’m not going to go into here.

Was Lord Hutton awake during the Hutton Inquiry? I worry that, with the Royal Charter for the BBC being up for renewal in two years, Minister of Truth Lord Hutton (Yes, he was appointed as a Peer by Tony Blair. Why do you ask?) has delivered the capability for the government to turn it into a state-run media outlet of an altogether less inspiring nature. There was a debate last night on the radio in which lots of people were saying that a “Liberal clique” runs the BBC. You know what? Good, if it’s true! The Right has always been able to buy or bargain whatever media coverage it needs (See: The Daily Mail backing the BUF because Mussolini told them it was a good idea), and always will. Therefore, I don’t see the BBC having a Liberal bias as a bad thing, in a media overwhelmingly dominated by Right-wing views.

First British Sea Power, and now Franz Ferdinand. What is it, exactly, about a certain type of person in my generation that makes them obsessed with the Edwardian age? I think that it’s the awareness that what happens now will, to a large extent, affect the outcome of the rest of the 21st Century, for better or worse, just as 1900-1914 created the 20th Century. We see in pre-First World War Europe a mirror of ourselves, of a world about to be changed forever by new technologies, of doomed glamour and decadence, and of a hubristic confidence that History Is On Our Side (Fukayama take note). Perhaps we worry that an equivalent apocalypse awaits us, too. Maybe we shouldn’t worry – another Somme, another Verdun – might do us some good.

On a far, far lighter note, I now have a PhD topic, Cyprian being kind enough not to compare me to boiled vegetables of any description. Rather than just doing naval warfare, however, I will be applying my unique brand of analysis to all types of warfare. Now all I have to do is persuade some one that it's worth supervising me on. And get funded for it. Bugger...