The Dark Side of the Olympics: Kettling Cyclists and Telling Fairytales About Our Heritage
I was at WOMAD last Friday when the £27 million Olympics Opening Ceremony took place, but a screen had been set up especially for the occasion, and I managed to catch everything from the 800 nurses celebrating the NHS, through the tour of Britain’s modern musical history, to the start of the athletes’ processions.
The disorientation I felt initially has not gone away — a celebration of the NHS taking place while the current government, largely unopposed by the British people, has begun the process of destroying it, pushing through dreadful legislation despite the opposition of a majority of healthcare professionals, with the sole purpose of forcing the NHS to be prised open for private companies to profit as much as possible from it, while, over time, cutting the universal provision of services, especially to those who have little or no money.
There was also a disorientating musical celebration, which specifically included music that was either banned or caused consternation at the time of its release — the Sex Pistols performing “Pretty Vacant,” “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and “Firestarter” by the Prodigy. It was a good recap of the music that has defined Britain’s cultural landscape — also including the Clash and the Specials, to name but two of the many overtly political acts included — but at the same time it also failed to explain why such ferocious music had arisen in the first place; how, indeed, much of this music had come about because Britain is such a hard country to live in, in which the establishment has persistently done whatever it can to make life particularly difficult for young people unfortunate enough to be born without a silver spoon in their mouths. Read the rest of this entry »
Who's still at Guantánamo?
