Margaret Hodge gets on my hairy tits.
She’s just the kind of interfering left winger done good who thinks she knows best, and despite my fullness of the milk of human kindness being legendary if I found her near an industrial tree-shredder I’d have real problems restraining myself after today’s dim-bulb meddlesome social engineering nonsense from this Marxist turned New Labour minister (who has pious and crappy form in social services, too).
The world-famous BBC Prom concerts are not inclusive enough, she wittered today. Now, living in North Yorkshire they don’t physically include me, because it’s expensive to go down to London**. But, working-class northern bastard that I am I have, without instruction from a government minister, learned how to switch the radio on, and without any help from the Department of Culture Media and Sport have found Radio 3 and listened to many and many a Prom Concert. Free, and because I want to.
That privilege, that luxury is available to everyone in Britain (and, I think to some of you foreign benighteds through the World Service), because we have the BBC which is committed to putting a series of superb concerts on every year at which ‘Promenaders’ may turn up on the day, queue for a couple of hours and then pay £5 to stand through the most wonderful music played by world-class orchestras. It’s ace (I did it when I lived near London*), and to anyone within reach I really recommend it as a way of spending a summer evening. You need your fare to get there, £5, a willingness to listen to some classical music, and that’s it.
As to whether or not people don’t feel comfortable attending? Maybe they don’t like classical music. That’s fine. Whadya want the Proms to do, Madge? Broadcast a medley of soap opera themes? Commission a suite of advert themes? Don’t dumb it down: give people the opportunity to find that kind of music, if they want to. I did, and it enriched my life hugely.
There is no shortage of arts and culture in this country. I would rather put knitting needles through each eardrum than go to a club, a festival like V or the Notting Hill Carnival. I wouldn’t feel comfortable there, I wouldn’t like the music, but I don’t demand that they be made ‘comfortable’ for me.
Margaret: shut up, please shut up, stop meddling and go a long, long way away.
** Not whinging. Lived in London, it’s a dump. No proms here, but great quality of life.
*Beethoven’s 7th by the Berlin Phil was a take-it-to-my-grave moment.
