Jingle all the way

Hello all. I'm back in the office and the place has all the joie de vivre of the Marie Celeste, though I did bump into two friends in the canteen. They were discussing the awful situation of children seeking adoption: very few get adopted, and the proportion of adult prisoners who've been what's ironically called 'in care' is obscene: estimated at between a quarter and a half of all prisoners. 6% of children in care get 5 A-C GCSEs. A massive social failure which should revolt us all.

On the other hand, I've come up with a solution directly derived from our current cultural and political context. The dominant discourses are 'choice' and 'competition': education, schools (yes, they're a separate category but that's a whole other rant), hospitals, trains… why not adoption? Every single TV show going, from dancing to cooking, has had an unpleasant competition element added, as though it's not enough for people to simply do things well, and 'celebrity' has poisoned everything.

So welcome to The Oliver Factor, in which shiny scrubbed orphans compete in front of prospective parents and a celebrity panel (Louise Mensch, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan, Gary Glitter, Lord Leveson and David Mitchell). They'll demonstrate their crayon drawing skills, we'll follow their 'journey' as they take Suzuki Method violin lessons, shin up chimneys and learn to cook gourmet gruel under the tutelage of Heston Blumenthal and Nigella ('more licking, Waynetta'). The judges will develop proprietary catchphrases ('You're going home… sorry, you're going back to the home') and we'll follow the heartbreaking story of the doomed-but-hopeful entrants: 'Harold has a big personality and lots of love… but he picks his nose and can't get the polenta quite right for his new parents'. There will be suspicions about some children not actually being orphans but Simon Cowell's Oompa-Loompas. Pastoral care, music and acting masterclasses will be delivered by Madonna and Angelina Jolie.

You think I'm joking, but ITV4 researchers are making calls right now. Apparently Jordan and Melvyn Bragg are already on board.

Another blow for celebrity culture

One of the things I most hate about modern culture is its assumption that because a person is good at one thing (acting, miming, being amusingly drunk), they're automatically multitalented, and intelligent. Thus we move from talent to 'celebrity', in which the doings and sayings of anyone famous become somehow important. 


But sometimes this comes back to bite us on the collective bottom. Lee Ryan's famous comment on September 11th ('Who gives a fuck about New York when elephants are being killed?') now has a rival: Morrissey.

The controversial former The Smiths star was on stage at a show in Warsaw, Poland on Sunday night (24th July 2011) when he gave his thoughts on the two terror attacks in Oslo, which claimed the lives of at least 76 people.

According to Britain's Daily Mirror, before starting his track 'Meat Is Murder', the outspoken vegetarian told the crowd, "We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown... Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald's and Kentucky Fried S**t every day."

Morrissey saddens me. Once so talented, now a shadow of his former self. Away from the music, he seems to have assumed that because the media listens to him, he must be some kind of intellectual. His comments on immigration to Britain never cease to appal me: the son of Irish immigrants attacking other immigrants. Ugh. On this one, it's so entirely obvious how wrong he is that I'm not going to wear out my keyboard explaining it to you.


Obviously it's a bit cheeky of a provincial blogger to suggest that other people have delighted us long enough (as Austen put it) with their opinions, but at least I'm not parlaying some other form of achievement into a bully pulpit. 


Although… one of the delights of new media, especially Twitter, is the unmediated potential. I assume that every public statement made by someone famous is entirely scripted by a PR adviser. But because everybody has a mobile, and every celebrity will have an iPhone, they're more likely to wrest control of the easier media from their advisers, though the smarter PR agents will be on top of this. Angry, drunk, coked-up or merely dim celebrities will be tweeting their every 'thought' before the PA can stop them. And this can only be a good thing, because it rips away the glitz and reveals the flawed, often monstrous human. The end of celebrity culture can only be hastened.  Huzzah!

It's not just Bloom's Day

It was also the anniversary, a couple of days ago, of the Peasants' Revolt. They invaded London, camped at Blackheath (now an extremely rich area), trashed John of Gaunt's palace and raided the Tower of London, executed the Chancellor, who was also the Archbishop of Canterbury, and presented a very democratic set of demands - an end to feudalism, free movement, decent wages, cancellation of the Poll Tax. Then they were tricked by Richard II and savagely massacred.

I've just bought Rodney Hilton's Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 to mark the occasion. It was of course the last good thing to emerge from Essex.

Now we're going on strike again (June 30th), it's a good moment to muse on the possibilities inherent in mass action. Though I'm hoping George Osborne isn't in charge, because the Baronet will definitely initiate a massacre.

(Also in the post: New Woman novel Gallia of 1895, and Fred Inglis's History of Celebrity, for an MA module I'm running next year.