The One Show of Literature Modules

Today I walked, in the rain, to my first lecture of term in which I was certain I would know absolutely nobody in the room. As predicted, the room was full of strangers. Well, apart from the lecturer … He tutored me for an independent essay 2 years ago. He didn’t seem to recognise me though…



Having left home in a slight hurry, I stumbled in last, with steamed up glasses, soggy jeans, and a puddle in the back of my rucksack. I did that proper slow trudge into the classroom, looking around (pointlessly) for people I might recognise or who might ask me to sit with them. But of course all the desks were full, and I don’t think everyone was quite as aware of my entrance as my mind would have me believe. In my nervous distraction I took off my coat and hoody and bag, but not my hat. I realised this about 10 minutes in, but my state of hyper-self-awareness prevented me from taking it off at such a late stage in the lecture. It stayed on for the entire session. My head got a bit hot. The shiny new classroom design (with screens everywhere and words like ‘inspire’ stenciled on the walls) made me feel a bit like I was a new girl walking into an American form room. You know those films where the ‘new kid’ walks in and the camera pans round a room of faces staring open mouthed at them. That and the fact that I was wearing glasses and carrying a rucksack…

Having spent my morning reading the some of the lecturers recommended reading, which went rather enthusiastically into all the minute details of medieval English theatre staging, and used the words ‘interestingly’, and ‘fascinating’ both repetitively and over-optimistically, I was actually rather looking forward to the module. In a slightly amused way. The academic had also interspersed his chapter with sentences along the lines of ‘But we will find the true importance of these ‘parts of tree’ rollers attached to the York wagons later.’ And ‘Another function of the wooden arches will soon be revealed’. I felt like I was reading a ‘York Mystery Cycle’ edition of the One Show. I got the impression he fancied himself a bit of a geeky detective, and actually found it a bit charming. Not enough to read it to the end. But a bit.



After I sat down, the lecturer opened his first session by saying ‘I’m not going to make the mistake of asking if this module was anyone’s first choice, as I suspect it wasn’t anybody’s. However I will say this: students who study my modules tend to do very well’. I was the only one who laughed. Luckily I don’t think anyone heard me slouching at the back. He went on to say that we were welcome to take notes if we want, but all the information’s online.



Despite my awkward start in Medieval English Drama 3, I think I’m going to enjoy taking The One Show of literature modules. I’m looking forward to discussing whether the Wakefield Cycles were performed on manual or horse-drawn wagons, and why some wagons used 6 wheels and some 8, and whether the York wagons were meant to be viewed side or head on. I haven’t yet decided whether I am excited about this for the sheer hilarity of the situation, or because, deep down, I actually find it quite interesting. It’s the same complex emotion I experience when Matt Baker segues from interviewing Maggie Smith to a segment about British cauliflower consumption. I laugh at the hilariously tenuous link, but I once it starts, I kind of want everyone to be quiet so I can learn about cauliflowers …

 

the sort of people who are interested in my module 

Back To School

Would you look at that. It’s been a WHOLE YEAR since I started my blog! Happy Birthday Blog! It’s nice to think that this little site has now kind of tracked an entire year of my life. And an exciting year at that. With this in mind, I’m going to try and update it more often, so I have more to look back on when I’m old and boring and grey.

Starting blog-year 2 off with a BANG:

It’s 9.30 on a Sunday night. I’m curled up in bed wondering whether to finish reading Henry VI, or to watch a tv programme before I go to bed. If I decide to watch something, I’ll have to choose between the new Attenborough show about the rise of vertebrates, and the documentary about giant animals with Steve Backshall…

Cosy as I am, I can’t pretend this how I imagined I would be spending the night before my first day back at university. My overriding memories from first and second year consist mainly of painting my face like various different animals, and after a few beers roaring ferociously at anyone I met. Apart from that time I dressed up as a zebra…

Today I have divided a 100 page course-pack into sections and bound each one neatly with string, eaten 1 malteasers bar and half a bag of chocolate eclairs, read and made notes on a middle English York Mystery Play, done lots of ambigious ‘computer stuff’, and decided that strumming without a plectrum definitely sounds better when playing ‘Other Side of the World’ on guitar. Oh, and I walked to the postbox. It’s at the bottom of my road.

Had I, all that time ago back in August, followed some crazy reckless abandon and refused to register to come back for my final year of uni, my day would probably have gone very differently. I would have gone to work for the seventh day of the week and run around behind a bar for 6 hours. Then, due to my living quarters being slightly cramped, probably opted to spend the evening in another pub before skipping tipsily home around 11 and setting my alarm for 7.30 to get up for job number 2 on Monday morning. It’s a slightly different lifestyle. I would have eaten less food, and spoken to more people. I would also have read less, and played less music. I would have gone further than the end of my road. Rather than walking to the postbox, I would probably have looked guiltily in passing at a pile of letters and papers yet to be written on and sorted out.

When you come home from work and turn on the tv, you don’t have a constant nagging feeling that you should be doing something else. Here, with two dissertations to write and over 40 Shakespeare texts to cover in 20 weeks, there’s always something else I could be doing. I don’t know which I prefer. They say that spending a year out is a good thing to do, because it makes you appreciate education more. I'm not sure working has made me appreciate education more, but it may have made me appreciate midday starts and student discounts more. I can’t help wondering how many of the things my lecturers say next week will strike me as impractical academic bullshit.  

That said, did you know that H.D. was sent from London to Austria and referred to Sigmund Freud in 1933 due to her increasing paranoia about the Nazis and Adolf Hitler? I found that out this week. Some of the politicians at the time might have benefited from the same condition! I can feel I’m getting my geek on already.

My first seminar is tomorrow. Having been away for a year, it’s unlikely I will know anybody in it. I also have my first meeting back at the uni newspaper tomorrow, and a trial shift in a local bar next week. Give it a month or so and hopefully I will have got myself a nice (but probably reasonably unstable) balance of the two. 

Flashback

Money, Hypocrisy, Williamsburg and Wall St: They're not as bad as eachother

In the last couple of weeks I’ve somehow found myself in 3 separate jobs, working almost 7 days a week and simultaneously moving house. Phhew! My feelings of guilt towards this blog hold what I imagine to resemble the awkward feelings of a busy, neglectful mother towards her child. All I want to do is look after it and write for it and plan more things to do with it, but unfortunately, earning money has to take precedence.

In about a month I’m going travelling, and come September I’m going to have bills and expenses flying out of my bank account left right and centre. You know, like other functioning members of society do all the time? My break from the world of careers and study will soon be over, so I’m going out with a bang. The day before my 21st birthday, my friends and I are flying out to Amsterdam! We’re going to spend 3 weeks interrailing round Europe, and fly back to the UK from Venice in September. If all goes well, I won’t even notice myself morphing into a responsible adult. That’s what happens when you turn 21, right? I’ll return to the country an of-age young lady, and with all these exciting experiences under my belt, will settle immediately back into Birmingham life. I shall get a job and pay my rent on time and never drink too much and shall consider hand sanitiser, plasters and tissues as handbag essentials …


I’m going to have to get myself a handbag…

So unfortunately my writings have suffered in this new onslaught of life-stuff. It’s a bit of a sad situation. But while I have a spare couple of hours, rather than leave this space blank, I thought I would make like a dodgy sit-com episode, and go over content I’d made before. I curled up with my notebook, and had a read through the old scribbley pages from New York that hadn’t made it into digital form yet. So, again in afternoon television fashion,

HERE'S ONE I MADE EARLIER

:

I’m sitting in a café on Bedford Avenue (aka Hipster High St, Brooklyn). I’m in the corner on a rickety chair; the walls are stained with chipped yellow paint, which strange stained glass lamps on the wall dye orangey red in places. An exceptionally raucous Buzzcocks number is playing, much louder than a coffee shop should. A large black woman is taking orders behind the bar, belting out every instruction and customer request in bold soul-singer style. ‘Plain bagel and cream cheeeheeese, yeah!’ ‘thankyouuu, coohoome again!’ She doesn’t worry about making her tuneage meld with the angry guitars also blasting through the small shop.


I’m watching the queue for the bathroom begin to snake out of a dark, red-painted tunnel, at the end of which I can only assume is a tiny door shielding a toilet lodged in a cupboard. I really need a wee. I bet there isn’t any loo roll.


On using the toilet, I found band stickers plastered from ceiling to floor, across the cracked mirror, and even on the toilet seat. The one right above the sink said ‘fuck your job, write your screenplay’. The soap was kept in one of those plastic ketchup bottles you get in diners. There was loo roll.


I like Williamsburg. I like the cracked paint, the rickety chairs and the loud music. It tickles me, rather than repels me, that it is has been necessary to put up a sign saying ‘no spitting’. I like that I am asked whether I want ‘big or small’ as opposed to ‘grande or tall’. I like it, but I’m also faintly amused by the whole atmosphere I now find myself in.


Looking through the bookstalls stationed up and down the bustling street – every one of which has at least two Camus books, a copy of Aristotle’s Ethics and a minimum of one novel by either Virginia Woolf or Doris Lessing – I can’t help but crack a bemused smile. There’s something undeniably hypocritical about an area where people sell their art on the street every weekend for $10 or $15, and give their books away for any donation, but where the shops sell ‘vintage’ clothing for upwards of $150 and bespoke indie jewellery for as much as you would find in Manhattan. You can’t help but wonder whether the sellers are just setting up bookstalls in order to show the world that they have read Camus, and philosophised over the Greeks. The majority of people here are not short of cash. The local houses are beautiful family homes, or river view penthouses. With this in mind, the rickety chairs and chipped paint of this café become highly intentional design features, rather than odd quirks. People seem to be paying a lot of money to appear poor, anti-establishment, and grassroots-y. And frankly, thanks to their ripped levis and genuine ray-bans (even though it’s October), it’s a slightly half-arsed effort. Haight-Ashbury this is not.

All this amuses me, but doesn’t anger me at all. I have no judgement to pass on Williamsburg, as I did on the BusinessAwards Dinner. I don't have the same vom-ball forming in the back of my throat when I overhear conversations here, about tattoos of cats and bikram yoga. People here have just as many image hang-ups and hypocrisies as their Wall St counterparts, but at least the image they are conveying is one of sharing, and a lack of emphasis on money and value. Their hypocrisies don’t effect global finances, or lead to tax evasion, or deny school places to children in Africa. Hell, I’m sitting here too. Writing in my hardback notebook, wearing Calvin Klein jeans. And I have a copy of Ariel in my bag. I’m right at home. I don’t really see a problem with maintaining an atmosphere of dilapidation and retaliation despite the wealth of the area. 

Isn’t it actually nice to think that some of the people giving away books on the street must be highly paid city-workers…?

Mistakes.

Today, most of the people I started university with got their final degree classifications (well done everyone!) and I had a job interview. So the buzzword for the day really has been all about careers and lives and like ... the future and stuff. You know, that massive dark cloud of uncertainty, fear and despair hanging over my entire generation?

It got me thinking about what makes a good career, a good life, and whether there is a formula for success.

Career-wise, whenever successful people and celebrities are interviewed on TV about their careers, they always seem to say that they just fell into it. ‘Lucky bastards’ I used to wail in my head. ‘Don’t be so modest; stop pretending that everything in your life was so unexpected. Give me the key, the EXACT WAY you got your EXACT LIFE.’ These days I tend to think that they were probably telling the truth. Few people do exactly what they wanted to do when they were in school. I also think that it’s a good thing there isn’t a key, because I don’t really want to be Sporty Spice any more. My 9 year old self could have fast-tracked me on to X-Factor by now … ew. 

This last year, things didn’t turn out the way I had planned. All my deliberation and reasoning around my decision to leave New York circled around the idea of thinking about not just what I want now, but what is best in the LONG RUN. Whether or not in 10 years’ time, I would look back and think that I was stupid to leave.

But I’m not sure that this is necessarily the right way to look at things. The more time that passes since I left, the smaller the event seems. As more stuff happens, that decision becomes less and less relevant to my life. I think in general, in the actual ‘long run’, things matter less. Getting over the initial hurdle of rearranging your life is a big deal, but I reckon that individual moments are, as a rule, rather insignificant in our lives. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t scrutinize and think long and hard about big decisions that we make. -Actually, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If it’s the best move at the time, worrying about whether it will still be the best move in ten years’ time is silly, because it ten years’ time it will be in the past. I'm so bored of second guessing my 30 year old self. That’s why left New York. And why I got a tattoo.

It’s pretty much a standard assumption that last year I made a ‘mistake’, giving up an exciting and important career opportunity. My decision has been one I’ve never publicly justified, and one I don’t defend a lot even in private. I think I need to, because I don’t regret it and I really don’t want people to think that I do, or to feel sorry for me.

I think mistakes (if you want to call them that. Although I prefer the term 'detours') are great. They make life more interesting, they make you more interesting, and they keep you on your toes. I hope I make many more. Working consistently within the realms of the reasonable, safe and practical can, I suspect, lead to more regret than a few unexpected debts or compromised living situations. I refuse to be submissive to some fictional, world-weary middle aged version of myself. One who everyone seems to be trying to convince me will be disapproving and regretful of all the irresponsible actions I make that stop me getting a respectable career. People have been warning me of her inevitable arrival since I first sat in a GCSE classroom. At what point do I begin to turn into this killjoy future-me? Probably about the same time I start answering to her.

I suppose what I’m saying is, in the wake of this imposing dark cloud, full of unemployment statistics, living wage figures, pay gaps and Ian Duncan Smith, I refuse to go corporate out of fear. 

BlogPost2013

I don’t like to let this blog get neglected. My (completely unofficial) target is to post at least once a month, which has so far been an easy task. But as time paces on, further and further away from the last time I posted, I have to admit that this time, I’m struggling.

Sorting out what to write about in my blog is usually a question of sitting down with some pen and paper, and organising all the millions of Thinks running round my brain in different directions; choosing the ones I need, and making them stand sensibly in a logical line.

But recently, I haven’t had the Thinks running round my head. Normally, it’s a question of batting them back and sorting them out before overflow. Like when I’ve got loose paper falling out my notebooks, bags and desk space and I eventually do the filing. 

Now I'm just desperately trying to summon them. It feels like the equivalent to spreading blank paper all over a clear desk and bed. Which sounds like a ridiculous and abstract form of mad protest ... My brain feels a little bit lost.

I seem to have fallen into a numb routine of going to work, coming home, eating, drinking and sleeping. A dim sense of guilt creeps into my head as I hit the pillow each night looking at the pile of half-finished books sitting on my windowsill, and the array of notebooks sitting under my desk; the same place they were in a week ago. 

I miss the Thinks. 

Culture, Innit.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been involved with Birmingham 2022, a project connected with the new library of Birmingham. I’m one of about 15 young people involved with various creative industries have been recruited to partake in meet-ups and an intensive summer school, where we will curate and produce an online blog and print magazine for the Discovery Festival (which runs in tandem with the opening of the library in September).

Oosh, didn’t that sound pretentious and bullshit?! There’s a load more where that came from: prepare yourselves for a reflective post about my life aims, full of words like ‘determination’ ‘passion’ and ‘creativity’!

On top of just making the magazine, another aspect of the project is to look ahead, and discuss what the arts and culture industry is going to look like (particularly in Birmingham) in 10 years’ time. How it will be impacted by modernization, trends, technology, politics, and much more. To this end, we've spoken to a ‘trend forecaster’ (yep, told you to prepare yourself!) William Higham about how to predict cultural trends, and the last session was a ‘cultural meet-up’, where we held a discussion about arts and culture industry with a panel of people from various creative backgrounds: RuthClaxton (Director of Eastside Projects and practising artist), Noel Dunne (involved with an organisation that offers advice and guidance for Birmingham’s emerging creative talent), Dan Whitehouse (the Next Generation producer at Mac, Birmingham) and Katie Banks (Head of Education and Community at Town Hall and Symphony Hall).

So far, I’ve found this project to be a great little peephole into the world of arts and culture. It was interesting to meet people who have made their careers in such a precarious industry, and talk to them about how they became successful; what the realities of the sector are, and what they think and feel about the future.

I’m tempted to describe arts and culture as something ‘I’ve wanted to work in all my life’. But, apart from being an over-used and cringe-worthy phrase, I also don’t think it’s true. The determination to do something creative in the future has only really come to me in the last year or so; since going to the States. Only recently have I managed to shake off some instincts which I think are especially ingrained in my generation. Being born at the tail end of Thatcherism meant that we were brought up seeing the mass-firings and downsizings of the 90s as normal procedure. Growing up, we knew that profits were king; that workers were replaceable, and quick hirings and firings were a company’s right; that to make money, you had to get an impeccable skillset tailored to a specific profession, because unique talents are pointless. So no, I didn’t have a lot of drive to be creative. More an anxious scrabble to discover perfect office role for me, one I just couldn’t have heard of yet.

Since the 80s and 90s, ‘corporate’ seems to have become in itself a compliment; a byword for ‘efficient’ and ‘good’. The financial crash happening the year we took our GCSE’s, and the UKs austerity measures being introduced the year we did our A-Levels, meant our schooling too, emphasised in us the importance of getting a ‘real’, ‘paying’ job, and encouraged us to see stable industries like banking and business (ironically) as the only viable sector. Because despite the crash, they still made the most money. Even now, despite not claiming any welfare, and being able to afford to do exciting, voluntary positions, I still feel a slight sense of guilt, and of uselessness, if I’m not earning. Arts and Culture seemed to me to be this amazing working environment, but never something to aim for. For people growing up shit-scared of not having any money at all, an industry where actually earning a living from your profession is one of the biggest obstacles made it an unthinkable career option.

 After talking to these professionals about the fact that you will do many different jobs, and your career will change direction many times, the precariousness of the sector no longer seems to me like a price to pay for doing what you love, but part of the beauty of it. Switching jobs on a regular basis, and working within many different but interconnected industries (literature, theatre, tv, film, dance) appeals to me much more than any definitive career path. Since I left BAB, (effectively officially shutting the door on international business) I’ve been looking for an alternative option. I’ve been desperately looking for one profession that I love so much that I would never consider doing anything else. Because that level of passion seemed to me to be what you need to succeed in your chosen workplace. But there isn’t one thing that I want to do rather than anything else at all. I find it all exciting. For many people, this is the problem with working in arts. It’s not a 9-5 job, with a set pay rate. It’s not safe. Since running away from rubbing shoulders with CEOs in a cushy 9-5, this aspect now offers me a fantastic kind of freedom.

Just because I find a happy autonomy in the fact that arts and culture workers mainly occupy multiple jobs on short-term contracts and are unlikely to have regular income, does not mean I’m going to paint it as some hidden perk of the industry, if only you look at it from a slightly different angle. I would not consider it to be an objective advantage. I’m not going to gold leaf shit. I’m not a politician. Although I can’t help thinking that sometimes, having a similar environment in some of our more prominent industries wouldn’t be the worst thing. Imagine if every future hedge fund manager had to ‘pay their dues’, and spend 5 years doing accounts for welfare-recipients and the unemployed; getting paid pittance and travelling from job to job in a 1986 ford escort, occasionally having to busk on the streets as a human calculator for petrol money. Really demonstrate their passion and commitment to banking.

The biggest problem with there being so little employment and money circulating in arts and culture, is that (as was pointed out on our panel) it means that only a fraction of the population can afford to properly commit to it. In our session, when we thought about the future, and the impact of austerity (which generally means a cut of around 50% in most councils) on the arts, a few panelists chose to emphasise the advantages of this. I don’t deny that with less government help, there will be an exciting rise in a more DIY approach to things like theatre, exhibitions, and other cultural events. Without access to as many venues for example, people will no doubt find creative alternatives. With less funding, also comes greater scope to be experimental. If you have the money, that is. I couldn’t help a slight nervousness from creeping up on me when we talked about arts and culture becoming more entrepreneurial. Surely, there is a flip-side to this, free, experimental, DIY arts scene we are envisioning. Businesslike, profit driven arts and culture do already exist: the X Factor, Twilight, Crazy Frog. I personally feel like I’m already seeing a rise in repeats shown on prime time BBC…

Perhaps we just have to accept that times change. Arts and culture will always find funding. Perhaps emerging young artists will have to adapt to a more American model for financing themselves. In London too, artists could clear out their workshops once a month, hire a bad DJ, splash some UV paint around and shower everyone in PBR for a tenner entry. Or maybe it is time to stop gold-leafing shit. I’m still waiting for our generation’s punk or Spitting Image. A bit less positive thinking and a bit more anger may be just what we need. 

Reds v Dead (Woman).

My weigh in on the media's coverage of the death of Maggie Thatcher: Late on the uptake as ever, here’s my reaction to the reactions. 

Grief-Encounter

Whatever you think about Thatcher, old ladies, strokes, strikes, Tories, the dead; your view was probably echoed thousands of times across the internet last week. At lunchtime on Monday, the web experienced an almost instantaneous sea-change as people uploading pictures of their soups and sandwiches were suddenly drowned out by the swaths of people expressing sorrow, cheer, voicing disgust, advertising party venues, publicising condolances, moralistically chiding cheerers and shouting chiders down from high horses. ‘Shouldn’t we remember what she did in the Falklands?’ ‘Can we get Hefner to number 1 this week?’ ‘This isn’t a victory, lets be perfectly clear, boys and girls …’



Social media became a verbal riot. In half an hour, my facebook feed was transformed from the usual continuous drone of cat pictures and football results to political essays abound, expostulating about the reactions of both right and left. Monday’s twitterverse confirmed that, as we were all aware, Maggie polarized opinion, leaving no one on the fence. I can’t help feeling like die-hard Thatcherites who are also big fans of Frank Turner and Irvine Welsh must have spent the day in quite the emotional pickle, wrestling with an inner beast. (Although in my opinion, that must be how they spend most of their lives. Can an extreme exercise in doublethink such as singing along to Different Class whilst concurrently harbouring a mistrust of welfare-recipients stem from anything other than deep-seated confusion? David Cameron can’t listen to Morrissey and live with himself simultaneously, CAN HE!?) But that dichotomy is for another time.

We have no control over what is said on the internet. So naturally, sitting at our computers, like we do all day, we are exposed to an uncensored and unpoliced view of what people have to say. Especially in the aftermath of an event as emotionally evocative as the death of the Iron Lady. The reaction on the internet, varied and discursive as it was, was a lot less troubling than the coverage that has since graced our ears and screens for the past week from official news outlets. The television, and the papers. The professional correspondents, and politicos. Even the satirists. Watching news (the local, the national, the rolling; the Newsnight extended edition; the specialist Question Time, etc …) as I - masochist that I am - am wont to do of 5 consecutive evenings, I was a little disturbed. Not by the lack of debate, but the nature of the debate which did take place. 

The news did not erase the fact that she was divisive, or that her policies hurt people. Insults or disrespect were not what I was hoping for, anyway. Given that I felt uneasy watching the celebrations taking place after Osama bin Laden was killed, I knew I could not join the revelers in Brixton. Such action would make me an unparalleled hypocrite, and probably not a very nice person. Given that I disapproved of the way the Americans denied Bin Laden the correct muslim funeral, I’m wondering whether it’s even okay for me to condemn the expensive, sappy vom-fest that tomorrow most probably will be. (But I can’t help a little bit of me hoping that someone throws an egg … or a carton of milk …) No, I didn’t feel like there was any attempt by the media to paint her as something she wasn’t.



However, there were a few moments of news coverage in the aftermath of Thatcher’s death that I found very disconcerting, and very telling. One was David Cameron’s speeches on the subject, first outside Downing St, and then a couple of days later in the House of Commons. His choking up at the phrase ‘she didn’t just lead this country, she saved it.’ His visible, full bodied wince as he admitted that ‘she … divided opinion.’ His fairy-tale reference to the position of Prime Minister as 'the greatest position in the land.' His waxen forehead, reflecting the weak sun as it bowed in sorrow and grief ... his pudgy finger subtley and yet oh so obviously wiping back a tear from his soulless eyes … But I'm getting carried away. Whatever, it was the most histrionic bumlick of a speech I have ever witnessed outside of the Academy Awards. Ken Livingstone is labelled ‘absurd’ on Newsnight for harking back to the banking regulations of the 70s, and yet Davey C's theatrics go unchecked and un-mocked?



Leftwing ideology has lost a lot of credibility in the last 30 years; these days, 'unionisation', ‘tight regulation’, and ‘high taxation’ are buzzwords for political suicide. And the media are playing the same game. Thatcher was an unwavering Conservative, and everyone feels the need to appease her slightly in their policies. Shirley Williams desperately trying to make it apparent that she respected Thatcher as a woman, did nothing for her Socialist Democratic Party whatsoever, and the sight of it made me squirm almost as much as she did in that Newsnight chair. 

While the coverage of the Lady herself may have been reasonably fair and not too airbrushed, it was an odd post-Thatcher world the media coverage showed us. One in which there seems to be an unwritten rule that we cannot question the goodness of markets and money. One in which broadcasting voxpops of people who clearly weren't alive under Thatcher's government shouting ‘She’s a witch, I’m glad she’s dead’ constitutes an uncontroversial and newsworthy representation of leftwing opinion, but for informed commentators, uttering the word ‘socialism’ gets you the verbal backhand, and the label ‘absurd’.