Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
Tbf. I remember reading a Guardian article years ago about the football museum in Preston. "A long drive up the M6" it said. 10 minutes on the train I thought.
Ha, yes, and come to think of it I remember an article in the Times which speculated that the Yorkshire accent was distinctive 'because Yorkshire is so far from everywhere else'. Which is true if your idea of everywhere stops at the Watford Gap, but not if you look at a map of the UK which has Yorkshire very roughly in the middle and quite apart from its own population, a population of roughly 10 million within ab hour's drive.
Internal passport version of the famous Times "Fog in CHannel: Continent Cut Off" headline.
When Rishi fails to confirm that he will remain Defence Sec and be the UK's nominee for head of NATO next year. Not until or less I reckon and Rishi would be wise to buy the silence.
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
The French do something similar, in effect. You get tax breaks for having children. It's unusual in the west in the high birth rates among middle class people.
Yes but we need to get punitive. This is a demographic crisis. Your duty is to have kids. End of
I SUPPOSE we can make exceptions for people without wombs etc, but other than that: slam them with harsh taxes, maybe even deny them normal human rights. Stop them joining choirs. Let them into larger cities only between 3-5pm. Why do they need to move around anyway if they don’t have kids?
As a man without a womb, I endorse this message.
But surely a simpler solution? Ban contraceptives and abortions.
If you’re fat and stupid it should only be 6% of income, say. But the more genetically desirable you are - slim, smart, attractive, educated - the higher the tax if you don’t sprog. 30% of income
I mean, if you’re that much of a catch, why aren’t you knocking out the bairns?
When Rishi fails to confirm that he will remain Defence Sec and be the UK's nominee for head of NATO next year. Not until or less I reckon and Rishi would be wise to buy the silence.
Wallace will stay on in defence no matter who wins, unless he fancies a job at Foreign Sec - which he could probably get if he wanted from any of them.
Looking only at the first round vote, what would make any Tory MP choose one rather that another? I can come up with reasons why various different factions might support seven of the candidates (NB here I'm listing only the attractions, not any negatives):
Sunak: Brexiteer but grown-up, at least pays lip-service to sound finance, top-level experience, could clearly do the job
Truss: Nutty born-again Brexiteer, cabinet experience, plausible candidate if you want a nutty Brexiteer and irresponsible tax-cutter
Mordaunt: Fresh face, very personable, untainted, good CV for the selectorate
Badenoch: Even more of a fresh face, comes across extremely well, untainted, 'time for a change'
Tugendhat: Another fresh face and untainted, speaks well, strong on defence, traditional non-nutty Tory, supported by key Red Wall MPs.
Hunt: The only centrist (or former centrist) with the high-level experience to jump straight into the job, will appeal to the small number of remaining sane Tory MPs
Braverman: The candidate of choice for those MPs who find Liz Truss insufficiently nutty.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
Agree with much of that. Badenoch doesn’t seem like a change candidate to me, however. Her policies appear to be Johnsonian right-wing populism. There’s nothing she’s said that I couldn’t imagine coming out of the mouth of Nadine Dorries. KB is clearly more coherent and eloquent than ND, but the ideology is the same.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
God, you lot sound like a bunch of old farts. There is nothing wrong with a young person paying homage to the Stones or Led Zeppelin (admittedly the dull old Beatles is pushing it a bit far), it is a simple sign of the times (oh Prince, what a musician!) that kids can look back over a much longer period of cool music than their grandparents could. There is a lot of shitty pop out there, but even that has got better recently. Music and culture continues to evolve. The contrast with between the 1950s and the 1960s/70s will probably never be seen again, unless of course Brexiteers get their way and we revert full circle.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I concur.
Saw a German boy aged about twelve wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt yesterday. That’s like if I had gone about in the 1980s wearing a Fletcher Henderson Orchestra t-shirt. Simply tragic.
Guess you must have missed Flanders & Swann headlining Glasto in '72.
I went to see the Pixies last week. Where I was (middle aged man in a mosh pit), I was surrounded by people 20 years younger than me. They treated me as something of an amusing oddity. Yet I was only just old enough to be into the Pixies first time around; most of these people must have been born some time after they split up*. I don't begrudge them this, and am happy that the music I love has found a new audience, but I'm slightly bemused by it. (This isn't necessarily the case at other bands from that era I've seen recently: people under 40 were rare at the Wedding Present and nonexistent at Half Man Half Biscuit.)
*yes I know they reformed and have been releasing new albums, but 90% of the set was the pre-1992 era. They know what their audience wants.
When Rishi fails to confirm that he will remain Defence Sec and be the UK's nominee for head of NATO next year. Not until or less I reckon and Rishi would be wise to buy the silence.
When Rishi fails to confirm that he will remain Defence Sec and be the UK's nominee for head of NATO next year. Not until or less I reckon and Rishi would be wise to buy the silence.
Wallace will stay on in defence no matter who wins, unless he fancies a job at Foreign Sec - which he could probably get if he wanted from any of them.
I think TT has “next foreign sec” written all over him.
Unless Liz wins. She’ll probably give it to Nadine….
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
The French do something similar, in effect. You get tax breaks for having children. It's unusual in the west in the high birth rates among middle class people.
Yes but we need to get punitive. This is a demographic crisis. Your duty is to have kids. End of
I SUPPOSE we can make exceptions for people without wombs etc, but other than that: slam them with harsh taxes, maybe even deny them normal human rights. Stop them joining choirs. Let them into larger cities only between 3-5pm. Why do they need to move around anyway if they don’t have kids?
I'll admit that on a pretty meagre income I can live a 'decent' life in large part because I don't have a family to support. You have to be careful though. Some people are frankly not suited to being parents. The major problem as I see it is that if we know that some people won't have children and very few have more than two, then fertility rates are going to be below replacement level.
The extortionate cost of housing for Gen Y/Z is the obvious problem.
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
The French do something similar, in effect. You get tax breaks for having children. It's unusual in the west in the high birth rates among middle class people.
Yes but we need to get punitive. This is a demographic crisis. Your duty is to have kids. End of
I SUPPOSE we can make exceptions for people without wombs etc, but other than that: slam them with harsh taxes, maybe even deny them normal human rights. Stop them joining choirs. Let them into larger cities only between 3-5pm. Why do they need to move around anyway if they don’t have kids?
As a man without a womb, I endorse this message.
But surely a simpler solution? Ban contraceptives and abortions.
Give every man a cup to wank into then use the collected seed to impregnate women held on child producing farms. Between gestations they can be used as cabinet ministers. Fair and fecund. Edit - for future life cancellers i must point out this is a joke, a form of humour used until the early 2020s Second edit - i didnt say it was a good joke
Looking only at the first round vote, what would make any Tory MP choose one rather that another? I can come up with reasons why various different factions might support seven of the candidates (NB here I'm listing only the attractions, not any negatives):
Sunak: Brexiteer but grown-up, at least pays lip-service to sound finance, top-level experience, could clearly do the job
Truss: Nutty born-again Brexiteer, cabinet experience, plausible candidate if you want a nutty Brexiteer and irresponsible tax-cutter
Mordaunt: Fresh face, very personable, untainted, good CV for the selectorate
Badenoch: Even more of a fresh face, comes across extremely well, untainted, 'time for a change'
Tugendhat: Another fresh face and untainted, speaks well, strong on defence, traditional non-nutty Tory, supported by key Red Wall MPs.
Hunt: The only centrist (or former centrist) with the high-level experience to jump straight into the job, will appeal to the small number of remaining sane Tory MPs
Braverman: The candidate of choice for those MPs who find Liz Truss insufficiently nutty.
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
Candidate of choice for those who think their leader should be able to be taken apart by Amol Rajan in a five minute interview.
Just watched the beginning of PMQs and the events immediately before it.
The speaker did not handle that well. I'm not quite at the 'bring back Bercow' stage, but he's poor, even when tested by idiots.
What happened ?
Immediately before PMQs, a minister answered a final question with a clear 'yes' (to a question of 'will you meet with me'.) As PMQs was about to start, the minister left, but the speaker called her back to give the response again. After that he seemed rather flustered as the Alba MPs apparently made idiots of themselves.
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
My kids playlists are far more eclectic than my rather limited singles and albums collections were. They listen to music they like over the last 60-70 years with the odd bit of classical chucked in as well. This is clearly because of the availability of the music from streaming services which gives them access way, way beyond the R1 playlist of my youth. This is a good thing but it must make new material slightly harder to sell profitably. It's just a different world.
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
I think it's aimed at the psychology of some middle class types who aspire to be UC and insist on regarding UC problems as their own.
That seems to be standard fare for tory nutters, dying on the hill of the right to send their sons to Eton, leave them 8 figure sums free of tax etc
Anyone got any suggestions for Zahawi? I don't see it.
The three big achievements for Johnson and his government, as claimed by his supporters, are: Brexit, Vaccines and Ukraine.
The minister for Ukraine isn't standing. Brexit isn't all that popular in the polls, and the deal is being unpicked. So that leaves vaccines.
Zahawi was vaccines minister. He's the only contender closely associated with an indisputable success for the government. That ought to count for something.
Yes, I know people have made that argument, and it does seem to be true that Zahawi is an effective administrator, but that doesn't strike me as particularly relevant to the leader/PM job.
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
In that case - the Tory party may as well hold a coronation and then change the rules to exclude their members from having a say...
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
There was a reason that place was dubbed CONtinuityIDS (by, I believe, OGH).
The comments on there have always been a little bit nutty.
Telegraph got it priority right in regards to cost of living crisis stories...
Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record.....terrible....how do families manage...oh wait what, they aren't talking about after school clubs...with fees charged by nannies hitting an all-time high of close to £3,000 a month.
The Telegraph has been producing articles like this for my whole lifetime. Quite spectacular lack of awareness. Which is puzzling, because I don’t imagine those with nannies are typical of Telegraph readers, and certainly not of Telegraph journalists.
I still remember an article from the 90s about Grimsby. It started “Grimsby isn’t actually that far away. You only have to use three roads to get there – the M1, the M18 and the M180” Notice anything wrong with that? You will if you don’t live in the Home Counties. But it often doesn’t appear to occur at the Telegraph that they might have readers outside of the home counties.
Tbf. I remember reading a Guardian article years ago about the football museum in Preston. "A long drive up the M6" it said. 10 minutes on the train I thought.
Ha, yes, and come to think of it I remember an article in the Times which speculated that the Yorkshire accent was distinctive 'because Yorkshire is so far from everywhere else'. Which is true if your idea of everywhere stops at the Watford Gap, but not if you look at a map of the UK which has Yorkshire very roughly in the middle and quite apart from its own population, a population of roughly 10 million within ab hour's drive.
Internal passport version of the famous Times "Fog in CHannel: Continent Cut Off" headline.
It's softer than it used to be. I remember listening to a BBC radio doc that included an interview with a farmer from the coast in East Riding from the 1950s.
It could have been Norwegian from their West Coast. Almost completely incomprehensible. That's gone now.
I struggle to see how any of the people who sit in cabinet - especially those who retain confidence in him - can be seen as serious candidates to take over and make a significant change of direction.
Brown after Blair? Starmer after Corbyn? Sturgeon after Salmond? Close lieutenants often do manage to present themselves as a change.
They do - when the government was seen as a success. In this case the guy is resigning in disgrace with scores of ministers demanding that he quit.
Your last sentence fits Corbyn->Starmer. Blair->Brown was precisely because Blair had lost popularity and was heavily criticised over the Iraq war. Sturgeon was riding Salmond’s successes, although today acts as if she’s barely even met Salmond.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
My kids playlists are far more eclectic than my rather limited singles and albums collections were. They listen to music they like over the last 60-70 years with the odd bit of classical chucked in as well. This is clearly because of the availability of the music from streaming services which gives them access way, way beyond the R1 playlist of my youth. This is a good thing but it must make new material slightly harder to sell profitably. It's just a different world.
+1 - the musical taste of my children ranges from Green Day to really Naff 90s pop to Folk music with various bits in between.
And that has a lot to do with the fact that everything is now instantly available without restriction. Streaming may have destroyed the income of musicians but it does allow people to find new music (continually) for next to nothing.
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
But this is what the membership always get - a choice between the frontrunner who was always likely to come top among the MPs and one other. What's different this time?
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
In that case - the Tory party may as well hold a coronation and then change the rules to exclude their members from having a say...
IF that happens then I suspect more than a few conservative MPs would see their constituency party evaporate. Why would you bother to be a member?
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
My kids playlists are far more eclectic than my rather limited singles and albums collections were. They listen to music they like over the last 60-70 years with the odd bit of classical chucked in as well. This is clearly because of the availability of the music from streaming services which gives them access way, way beyond the R1 playlist of my youth. This is a good thing but it must make new material slightly harder to sell profitably. It's just a different world.
+1 - the musical taste of my children ranges from Green Day to really Naff 90s pop to Folk music with various bits in between.
And that has a lot to do with the fact that everything is now instantly available without restriction. Streaming may have destroyed the income of musicians but it does allow people to find new music (continually) for next to nothing.
Yet what they seem to be finding the most, is old music. Witness Kate Bush being #1 a few weeks back, with a 37-year-old song.
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
1. The population Ponzi scheme is lunacy. There are already far too many people on Earth as it is. 2. Any support for such a daft idea as there is lasts precisely as long as Mrs X gets a 30% increase in her income tax bill immediately after her husband and two kids perish horribly in a motorway pile-up.
FWIW, if you're really determined to persuade young people to pump out brats earlier and in larger numbers then the most effective ways to get there are heavy subsidies for childcare, and bringing down the price of housing by building it quickly and in enormous numbers. Not through punishment beatings.
Sweden has a large suite of policies to make childbearing attractive, not least generous parental leave up until child reaches 8 (12 for state employees). It seems to have a marginally positive effect on fertility rates.
Of course, the best way to solve the demographic crisis would be compulsory euthanasia at 70. The crippling pensions burden, struggling health and social care sector, and the housing crisis all immediately and permanently solved. All without the need to burden the resources of the planet in general, and our tiny island in particular, with ever-increasing numbers of human beings.
Not sure I see the grey vote plumping for that one, mind you.
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
Agree 100%. The French have the right policies on this.
It's an issue we really don't have. At the moment our demographic position is already better than that of the French, without all their policies.
I really don't see why this question generates such obsession, leading to so much energy being wasted. It's like the anti-pensioners thing - massively overexaggerated for presumably political reasons.
Median Age (as good a metric as any, unless someone has an alternative).
Germany - 47.8 Italy - 46.5 Greece - 45.3 Austria - 44.5 EU - 44.0 Spain - 43.9 Netherlands - 42.8 Switzerland - 42.7 Denmark - 42.0 Poland - 41.9 France - 41.7 Canada - 41.8 Sweden - 41.1 UK - 40.6 Norway - 39.2 USA - 38.5
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
1. The population Ponzi scheme is lunacy. There are already far too many people on Earth as it is. 2. Any support for such a daft idea as there is lasts precisely as long as Mrs X gets a 30% increase in her income tax bill immediately after her husband and two kids perish horribly in a motorway pile-up.
FWIW, if you're really determined to persuade young people to pump out brats earlier and in larger numbers then the most effective ways to get there are heavy subsidies for childcare, and bringing down the price of housing by building it quickly and in enormous numbers. Not through punishment beatings.
Sweden has a large suite of policies to make childbearing attractive, not least generous parental leave up until child reaches 8 (12 for state employees). It seems to have a marginally positive effect on fertility rates.
Of course, the best way to solve the demographic crisis would be compulsory euthanasia at 70. The crippling pensions burden, struggling health and social care sector, and the housing crisis all immediately and permanently solved. All without the need to burden the resources of the planet in general, and our tiny island in particular, with ever-increasing numbers of human beings.
Not sure I see the grey vote plumping for that one, mind you.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
My kids playlists are far more eclectic than my rather limited singles and albums collections were. They listen to music they like over the last 60-70 years with the odd bit of classical chucked in as well. This is clearly because of the availability of the music from streaming services which gives them access way, way beyond the R1 playlist of my youth. This is a good thing but it must make new material slightly harder to sell profitably. It's just a different world.
+1 - the musical taste of my children ranges from Green Day to really Naff 90s pop to Folk music with various bits in between.
And that has a lot to do with the fact that everything is now instantly available without restriction. Streaming may have destroyed the income of musicians but it does allow people to find new music (continually) for next to nothing.
Yet what they seem to be finding the most, is old music. Witness Kate Bush being #1 a few weeks back, with a 37-year-old song.
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
More evidence for Danny Finkelstein's real socialist / real Brexiteer comparison.
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
More evidence for Danny Finkelstein's real socialist / real Brexiteer comparison.
That involves an assumption that ConHome is representative of the Conservative Membership.
If those who do not want that choice go on strike, then the rest will get the say.
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
But this is what the membership always get - a choice between the frontrunner who was always likely to come top among the MPs and one other. What's different this time?
What's different this time is the ideological gap between Sunak/Mordaunt and the membership.
Have a read of some of the scathing comments on Sunak/Mordaunt, all cheerfully upvoted by many on the site.
The business models used by the treasury do have a nasty habit of overvaluing improvements in areas that are already rich.. Shifting that to No 10 doesn't solve anything if the flawed models used remain the same
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
'Twas ever thus though, from my teens to early 20s I cosplayed rockers, rockabillies, fey Weimar romantics, 1940s zoot suiters, Waughian fogeys and a bit of cowboy thrown in. A brief period of punk was about the only new thing under the sun.
It is difficult to see how a genuine cultural upheaval like punk could happen now mind, fat John Lydon advertising butter and luvvin Trump & Brexit spoiled it for everyone.
I saw Pearl Jam last weekend and they did a cover of Public Image, I guessed Mr Lydon's recent venture into advertising had passed them by.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
My kids playlists are far more eclectic than my rather limited singles and albums collections were. They listen to music they like over the last 60-70 years with the odd bit of classical chucked in as well. This is clearly because of the availability of the music from streaming services which gives them access way, way beyond the R1 playlist of my youth. This is a good thing but it must make new material slightly harder to sell profitably. It's just a different world.
+1 - the musical taste of my children ranges from Green Day to really Naff 90s pop to Folk music with various bits in between.
And that has a lot to do with the fact that everything is now instantly available without restriction. Streaming may have destroyed the income of musicians but it does allow people to find new music (continually) for next to nothing.
Yet what they seem to be finding the most, is old music. Witness Kate Bush being #1 a few weeks back, with a 37-year-old song.
Wasn't that because of Stranger Things?
I've not watched Stranger Things, but I did watch the clip that used that song. And my goodness: it is a most effective piece of TV. Quite stunning, in fact. if the whole thing is anything like that then it must be sublime.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
My kids playlists are far more eclectic than my rather limited singles and albums collections were. They listen to music they like over the last 60-70 years with the odd bit of classical chucked in as well. This is clearly because of the availability of the music from streaming services which gives them access way, way beyond the R1 playlist of my youth. This is a good thing but it must make new material slightly harder to sell profitably. It's just a different world.
+1 - the musical taste of my children ranges from Green Day to really Naff 90s pop to Folk music with various bits in between.
And that has a lot to do with the fact that everything is now instantly available without restriction. Streaming may have destroyed the income of musicians but it does allow people to find new music (continually) for next to nothing.
Yet what they seem to be finding the most, is old music. Witness Kate Bush being #1 a few weeks back, with a 37-year-old song.
But that's because they hear a snippet then wish to hear it again. And Kate Bush does have a few classic songs (alongside a fair amount of meh given the limited size of her back catalogue).
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
But this is what the membership always get - a choice between the frontrunner who was always likely to come top among the MPs and one other. What's different this time?
What's different this time is the ideological gap between Sunak/Mordaunt and the membership.
Have a read of some of the scathing comments on Sunak/Mordaunt, all cheerfully upvoted by many on the site.
The outlook gap is wide and growing wider.
To be devils advocate here, isn’t the whole point of the Tory leadership election rules to make sure that the choice isn’t left solely to the membership?
If it was we’d probably be looking at PM Braverman.
I remember how utterly infuriated Conhome commenters were with the Cameron project from 2005-2010, the membership being out of step with the leadership is not something particularly new.
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
You're talking bollocks. "Vote strike"? "boycott"? Boris might not vote on principle. But not many more.
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
But this is what the membership always get - a choice between the frontrunner who was always likely to come top among the MPs and one other. What's different this time?
Nothing. But some MPs will whip them up about being denied a fair say. Same thing was done (briefly) when some thought Boris might not easily win among MPs.
None. But some MPs will whip them up a out 'denying' the members the chance to vote
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
My kids playlists are far more eclectic than my rather limited singles and albums collections were. They listen to music they like over the last 60-70 years with the odd bit of classical chucked in as well. This is clearly because of the availability of the music from streaming services which gives them access way, way beyond the R1 playlist of my youth. This is a good thing but it must make new material slightly harder to sell profitably. It's just a different world.
+1 - the musical taste of my children ranges from Green Day to really Naff 90s pop to Folk music with various bits in between.
And that has a lot to do with the fact that everything is now instantly available without restriction. Streaming may have destroyed the income of musicians but it does allow people to find new music (continually) for next to nothing.
Yet what they seem to be finding the most, is old music. Witness Kate Bush being #1 a few weeks back, with a 37-year-old song.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I've made exactly this point for some time. Culturally, 2022 doesn't feel that different from the late 90s. The music and telly and clothes are different, but not so different as the difference between the late 90s and the early 70s.
I would say this is almost solely down to the internet.
When I was young, you may not have liked what was on telly, or in the charts, but hunting out alternatives was pretty hard. You were at least aware of what was going on in the mainstream even if it wasn't your choice. Nowadays - well, I can't remember the last time I watched BBC1; and I am almost totally ignorant of chart music since Radio 6 came along and filled that need. And it is so much easier to seek out whatever niche in the cultural spectrum you might want to inhabit and ignore the rest of it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we lose our common reference points.
My kids playlists are far more eclectic than my rather limited singles and albums collections were. They listen to music they like over the last 60-70 years with the odd bit of classical chucked in as well. This is clearly because of the availability of the music from streaming services which gives them access way, way beyond the R1 playlist of my youth. This is a good thing but it must make new material slightly harder to sell profitably. It's just a different world.
+1 - the musical taste of my children ranges from Green Day to really Naff 90s pop to Folk music with various bits in between.
And that has a lot to do with the fact that everything is now instantly available without restriction. Streaming may have destroyed the income of musicians but it does allow people to find new music (continually) for next to nothing.
Yet what they seem to be finding the most, is old music. Witness Kate Bush being #1 a few weeks back, with a 37-year-old song.
Wasn't that because of Stranger Things?
I've not watched Stranger Things, but I did watch the clip that used that song. And my goodness: it is a most effective piece of TV. Quite stunning, in fact. if the whole thing is anything like that then it must be sublime.
(We don't have Netflix...)
Its not a show I have watched, but my understanding is Season 1 was excellent, then went off for a couple of seasons, but Season 4 (which is current one) is very good.
Leon said: "JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily"
After WW II, Stalin had a similar idea. To replace the heavy losses from the war (and his purges), he imposed a tax on single men when they reached 25 (as I recall).
(Stalin, unlike some of the other early Commies, had traditional ideas about families. But, so great was the need for people, that after the war he also allowed single women to place their children in orphanages, and then, if they married, reclaim them.)
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I concur.
Saw a German boy aged about twelve wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt yesterday. That’s like if I had gone about in the 1980s wearing a Fletcher Henderson Orchestra t-shirt. Simply tragic.
Guess you must have missed Flanders & Swann headlining Glasto in '72.
I went to see the Pixies last week. Where I was (middle aged man in a mosh pit), I was surrounded by people 20 years younger than me. They treated me as something of an amusing oddity. Yet I was only just old enough to be into the Pixies first time around; most of these people must have been born some time after they split up*. I don't begrudge them this, and am happy that the music I love has found a new audience, but I'm slightly bemused by it. (This isn't necessarily the case at other bands from that era I've seen recently: people under 40 were rare at the Wedding Present and nonexistent at Half Man Half Biscuit.)
*yes I know they reformed and have been releasing new albums, but 90% of the set was the pre-1992 era. They know what their audience wants.
I was at Half Man Half Biscuit in Leeds a few weeks ago and there were loads of younger people. To be honest, I was surprised how many.
Of course 85% of the audience was 40-plus overeducated, underpaid beta male centrist dads, just like me (not that I'm a dad, but you get what I mean). But there was a respectable amount of young uns. Some of them were even female. I saw one girl, probably early 20s, happily sporting a hi-vis vest and some - presumably Joy Division - oven gloves.
Did they read the standing orders? Did they read and UNDERSTAND them??
Never forget she was in the wrong that night. These things matter...
She made a procedural error. The only reason she was there was because those councillors and that council was a dysfunctional mess.
So she made a mistake under pressure, but if theyd not all been childish fools shed never have been in a position to make a mistake. Mistakes happen if people are under such pressure, its understandable . And abusive behaviour is not the answer when someone is wrong. You lose the moral high ground that way.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
'Twas ever thus though, from my teens to early 20s I cosplayed rockers, rockabillies, fey Weimar romantics, 1940s zoot suiters, Waughian fogeys and a bit of cowboy thrown in. A brief period of punk was about the only new thing under the sun.
It is difficult to see how a genuine cultural upheaval like punk could happen now mind, fat John Lydon advertising butter and luvvin Trump & Brexit spoiled it for everyone.
I saw Pearl Jam last weekend and they did a cover of Public Image, I guessed Mr Lydon's recent venture into advertising had passed them by.
IF you actually read conhome you can infer quite a bit. A clash between the MPs and the membership may be coming.
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
But this is what the membership always get - a choice between the frontrunner who was always likely to come top among the MPs and one other. What's different this time?
What's different this time is the ideological gap between Sunak/Mordaunt and the membership.
Have a read of some of the scathing comments on Sunak/Mordaunt, all cheerfully upvoted by many on the site.
The outlook gap is wide and growing wider.
To be devils advocate here, isn’t the whole point of the Tory leadership election rules to make sure that the choice isn’t left solely to the membership?
If it was we’d probably be looking at PM Braverman.
I remember how utterly infuriated Conhome commenters were with the Cameron project from 2005-2010, the membership being out of step with the leadership is not something particularly new.
Is that not the standard for all political parties - striking a balance between MPs who have to work with the leader, and members who are a wider group?
(You can argue that the leader being PM makes a difference.)
They still have the “John Peel” stage at Glastonbury, so I suppose the key is to die at the right time.
I a not a big one for cancel culture etc, but I do find that quite incredible that he seemed to have got a pass for so long and held up as music radio god, given he admitted having sex with under aged girls, while somebody did a hurty tweet 10 years and straight in the dog house.
Did they read the standing orders? Did they read and UNDERSTAND them??
Never forget she was in the wrong that night. These things matter...
She made a procedural error. The only reason she was there was because those councillors and that council was a dysfunctional mess.
So she made a mistake under pressure, but if theyd not all been childish fools shed never have been in a position to make a mistake. Mistakes happen if people are under such pressure, its understandable . And abusive behaviour is not the answer when someone is wrong. You lose the moral high ground that way.
I agree with that to a point. She really ought to have been ready for a confrontation. It shouldn't have come as a surprise.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
'Twas ever thus though, from my teens to early 20s I cosplayed rockers, rockabillies, fey Weimar romantics, 1940s zoot suiters, Waughian fogeys and a bit of cowboy thrown in. A brief period of punk was about the only new thing under the sun.
It is difficult to see how a genuine cultural upheaval like punk could happen now mind, fat John Lydon advertising butter and luvvin Trump & Brexit spoiled it for everyone.
I saw Pearl Jam last weekend and they did a cover of Public Image, I guessed Mr Lydon's recent venture into advertising had passed them by.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
'Twas ever thus though, from my teens to early 20s I cosplayed rockers, rockabillies, fey Weimar romantics, 1940s zoot suiters, Waughian fogeys and a bit of cowboy thrown in. A brief period of punk was about the only new thing under the sun.
It is difficult to see how a genuine cultural upheaval like punk could happen now mind, fat John Lydon advertising butter and luvvin Trump & Brexit spoiled it for everyone.
I saw Pearl Jam last weekend and they did a cover of Public Image, I guessed Mr Lydon's recent venture into advertising had passed them by.
Another sad middle aged man being an attention seeker. The penis extension sports car is out, being publicly "outspoken" about politics is in as the new midlife crisis.
They still have the “John Peel” stage at Glastonbury, so I suppose the key is to die at the right time.
I a not a big one for cancel culture etc, but I do find that quite incredible that he seemed to have got a pass for so long and held up as music radio god, given he admitted having sex with under aged girls.
I agree, but I would have thought that a very good proportion of prominent pop and rock artists did the same in the 60s-80s. Not to excuse it, but just to note he probably wasn't that unusual.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
'Twas ever thus though, from my teens to early 20s I cosplayed rockers, rockabillies, fey Weimar romantics, 1940s zoot suiters, Waughian fogeys and a bit of cowboy thrown in. A brief period of punk was about the only new thing under the sun.
It is difficult to see how a genuine cultural upheaval like punk could happen now mind, fat John Lydon advertising butter and luvvin Trump & Brexit spoiled it for everyone.
I saw Pearl Jam last weekend and they did a cover of Public Image, I guessed Mr Lydon's recent venture into advertising had passed them by.
Comments
But surely a simpler solution? Ban contraceptives and abortions.
edit:
Either leave the electorate with doubts as they go to vote without them having time to verify it, or undercut success in round 1.
The speaker did not handle that well. I'm not quite at the 'bring back Bercow' stage, but he's poor, even when tested by idiots.
They didn't. They had Yorkshire accents.
Broad Yorkshire is nigh on incomprehensible, even to other people from Yorkshire.
I don't begrudge them this, and am happy that the music I love has found a new audience, but I'm slightly bemused by it. (This isn't necessarily the case at other bands from that era I've seen recently: people under 40 were rare at the Wedding Present and nonexistent at Half Man Half Biscuit.)
*yes I know they reformed and have been releasing new albums, but 90% of the set was the pre-1992 era. They know what their audience wants.
Asking for a friend.
HAHAHAH
Unless Liz wins. She’ll probably give it to Nadine….
The extortionate cost of housing for Gen Y/Z is the obvious problem.
Between gestations they can be used as cabinet ministers.
Fair and fecund.
Edit - for future life cancellers i must point out this is a joke, a form of humour used until the early 2020s
Second edit - i didnt say it was a good joke
The membership do not want a choice between Mordaunt and Sunak. IF that's the choice, then I reckon a vote strike/ultra low turnout is not out of the question.
A boycott might be pushing it, but I would not entirely rule that out, either.
Former Radio 1 star faces new claims of sexual abuse and misconduct from multiple women; he has previously denied wrongdoing
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jul/13/tim-westwood-accused-of-sex-with-14-year-old-girl-when-in-his-30s
Of course nobody at the BBC knew anything ever.
https://twitter.com/twlldun/status/1547186047737536514?s=21&t=xX7HE-VXMhOFmqjaT73l-w
Biden at 7s is big
The comments on there have always been a little bit nutty.
It could have been Norwegian from their West Coast. Almost completely incomprehensible. That's gone now.
And that has a lot to do with the fact that everything is now instantly available without restriction. Streaming may have destroyed the income of musicians but it does allow people to find new music (continually) for next to nothing.
@KemiBadenoch announces she will break up the Treasury if PM. Economic growth would be run from No10, with a new Office for Economic Growth.
“As Exchequer Secretary I saw first hand the barriers to economic growth - we need to change the way the Treasury works."
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1547187804081356800
Not sure I see the grey vote plumping for that one, mind you.
I really don't see why this question generates such obsession, leading to so much energy being wasted. It's like the anti-pensioners thing - massively overexaggerated for presumably political reasons.
Median Age (as good a metric as any, unless someone has an alternative).
Germany - 47.8
Italy - 46.5
Greece - 45.3
Austria - 44.5
EU - 44.0
Spain - 43.9
Netherlands - 42.8
Switzerland - 42.7
Denmark - 42.0
Poland - 41.9
France - 41.7
Canada - 41.8
Sweden - 41.1
UK - 40.6
Norway - 39.2
USA - 38.5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age
Not sure I see the grey vote plumping for that one, mind you.
(Obvs, you don't need to raise your knee very high....)
If those who do not want that choice go on strike, then the rest will get the say.
we go highRishi get kneed in the face.Have a read of some of the scathing comments on Sunak/Mordaunt, all cheerfully upvoted by many on the site.
The outlook gap is wide and growing wider.
(We don't have Netflix...)
Penny Mordaunt on course to become the next PM if she gets to final 2 according to a snap YouGov poll of Tory members
* She beats every contestant in the final 2
* Liz Truss beats Rishi Sunak
* Kemi Badenoch comes second https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1547192921644011523/photo/1
If it was we’d probably be looking at PM Braverman.
I remember how utterly infuriated Conhome commenters were with the Cameron project from 2005-2010, the membership being out of step with the leadership is not something particularly new.
None. But some MPs will whip them up a out 'denying' the members the chance to vote
The trend is far more general:
https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-music-business-turns-into-groundhog
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily"
After WW II, Stalin had a similar idea. To replace the heavy losses from the war (and his purges), he imposed a tax on single men when they reached 25 (as I recall).
(Stalin, unlike some of the other early Commies, had traditional ideas about families. But, so great was the need for people, that after the war he also allowed single women to place their children in orphanages, and then, if they married, reclaim them.)
Of course 85% of the audience was 40-plus overeducated, underpaid beta male centrist dads, just like me (not that I'm a dad, but you get what I mean). But there was a respectable amount of young uns. Some of them were even female. I saw one girl, probably early 20s, happily sporting a hi-vis vest and some - presumably Joy Division - oven gloves.
So she made a mistake under pressure, but if theyd not all been childish fools shed never have been in a position to make a mistake. Mistakes happen if people are under such pressure, its understandable . And abusive behaviour is not the answer when someone is wrong. You lose the moral high ground that way.
https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/11/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/
"Sex Pistols icon Johnny Rotten backs Jacob Rees-Mogg to be new Prime Minister"
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/sex-pistols-icon-johnny-rotten-27435937
(You can argue that the leader being PM makes a difference.)
Penny Mordaunt beats EVERY candidate in a run off by at least 18 points
Sunak loses to everyone except Zahawi/Braverman/Hunt
Truss beats Sunak by 24
https://thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-leadership-race-candidates-prime-minister-latest-tcx239sq0
https://twitter.com/hzeffman/status/1547192886571278336
"Mr Rees-Mogg – who is a devout Catholic - appeared to be flattered by the comments.
He tweeted: “Even if my leg is being pulled I am honoured by this exceptionally kind endorsement by Mr Lydon, alias Johnny Rotten.”"
Edited extra bit: worst result of the frontrunners, that is.