On the 28th November 2013, I saw a piece on BBC Breakfast News celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the ‘Now That's What I Call Music’ series. During the segment a journalist from Music Week appeared and talked about the enduring appeal of the compilation album. In doing this he stated that “there is so much music out there, that people often don’t know where to look for it, what to listen to and what to like. How patronising is that? Silly little humans haven’t got a clue about music so feed them cheap compilations of whatever we are trying to push at that given moment. My first reaction to this was how can possibly there be too much music? Are we now putting a cap on creativity and art nowadays, also, if you look around, where is all this music he talks about. It certainly isn’t in the High Street. Independent record shops have all but disappeared apart from a strong few holding on and offering a fine service. All you find in supermarkets are these compilations and the ...
Who is to blame for the recent riots?
It seems that everyone has their own demon in this and most of them have a point somewhere in their own argument. It is not one single thing that is the cause of the recent unrest; it is a succession of events and circumstances that have brought the country to this point. First of all lets just remember that even though they made up a large percentage of those arrested and suspected of being involved, there were also grown men, some arrested were in their 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s and held down decent jobs so it is not simply down to the ‘Youth’ element, or benefit culture.
I suppose no single person or culture is to blame for where we are now, here is where I see the problems: -
Governments should never have made such devastating cuts to vulnerable young people depriving them of services, or to services such as police or fire services, which mean that they struggle to cope, should events like this happen. Recent austerity measures have forced...