NOTES:
This is in the dread Daily Mail, but, bearing that in mind, it is a quite good interview with the retiring chairman of the Police Federation, Jan Berry, emphasising just how the force service force is slowly being destroyed.
As a result, she fears that many officers know no other form of policing. 'They will not have done the sort of policing I did, where I learned to develop my instincts,' she says. 'All they know is "sanctioned detentions", "offenders brought to justice" and "targets". Their ability to use common sense and their discretion has been removed.'
Following on from yesterday’s post partly about formal verse, there is a review of Why poetry matters, by Jay Parini, in The Independent by Willam Palmer, who says ‘Parini falls into the error of assuming that "free" verse is somehow more genuine than formal.’ Palmer, with I think some justification, blames poetry’s fall from grace on poets who ‘decided long ago that what they did was not for the general public, and that public, silently, but with some sorrow, agreed and went away.’
An Excellent article on why the 60s weren’t such a radical break as some like to think they were.
Does anyone actually like hip-hop? I know I don’t, I’ve listened to loads of different styles of music from all around the world and many eras and there is not much I’ve disliked as much as Hip-hop, except Benjamin Britten, that is.
COMMENTS:
Billy Bragg and Britishness at The Grauniad’s Cif.
My comment:
It seems to me that if we want an essentially British holiday then Shakespeare’s birthday (probably 23rd April) is a good one.
As for this ‘what is Britishness’ question, I wrote this over three years ago now, and I still think it makes a fairly decent fist of summing up the problem of defining it all.
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