Back to the Future (how many times has this title been referenced)

Funny how one can get quickly out of the habit of doing things, but hard to restart them again.  Anyway, all my coursework bar one (not including the small matter of a 14,000 word dissertation) is done and all my classes have finished -sadly in my opinion - forever.  This one-year Masters course has been a burst of freshness to blow away the cobwebs.

Anyway, when the Argie-bargie over the Falklands was at its most shrill and there was still an eighties-revival in the charts, people were saying how we we were living the 1980s all over again.  As in Hollywood, the people who had grown up in that decade had become the movers-and-shakers.  In the 1990s, we had a re-run of the 1960s, in the 2000s the '70s were in vogue and now it is the turn of the 80s.

Compounding all this is the death of Margaret Thatcher.  In a front-page cartoon on The Independent speaking of the funeral, one middle-aged copper said to another: "All police leave cancelled - just like the good, old days!"  Now the BBC is effectively banning the choice of a campaign by many thousands by playing only a five second excerpt of 'Ding dong, the witch is dead' on Sunday's Top 40 (where it may even reach no. 1).  Even those on the right are divided about whether the song should be played in its entirety or not, with some saying it would be like a heckle at a funeral - except the chart show isn't a wake - while Conservative Marc Wilson MP said it would be terrible that such a staunch upholder of freedom around the world should be associated with censorship.  My own view is that the song should be given the full freedom of the airwaves wherever is debuts, as it is a useful corrective to the overblown proceedings Thatcher (against her stated own wishes) is being given - a state funeral in all but name, with even the Queen attending (though maybe just to make sure her nemesis is dead).  If it had been a quiet funeral (as Thatcher wanted and as indeed Clement Attlee had), with no Tory triumphalism, such as this 'True Blue' planning commission, then the 'Ding dong' song would be gratuitous.  As it is, it picks at establishment values by those who would otherwise feel unempowered (and indeed may have been disempowered by Thatcherite policies).  Being grandiose always runs the risk of the bathetic.  I think myself that the Pet Shop Boys' ironic take on yuppie culture in Opportunities would have been a far better caricature of her reign.  In a funny way, the BBC are playing the ultimate tribute to Thatcher, effectively banning songs as they did with Frankie Goes To Hollywood in the early 80s.