Big Brother Watch

The weaponisation of classical music

Over at Reason.com an interesting article by the ever-thoughtful Brendan O'Neill - How Britain is using classical music as a form of social control.

Of course, we all know about the use of Beethoven & friends to deter young people from spending time in train stations - the new story is the decision by schools to subject

badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In “special detentions,” the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant... and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

... some of the children who have endured this Mozart authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one critical commentator said, they will probably “go into adulthood associating great music—the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth—with a punitive slap on the chops.” This is what passes for education in Britain today: teaching kids to think “Danger!” whenever they hear Mozart’s Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.

Sounds familiar? It should -

Anthony Burgess’s nightmare vision of an elite using high culture as a “punitive slap on the chops” for low youth has come true. In Burgess’s 1962 dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, famously filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, the unruly youngster Alex is subjected to “the Ludovico Technique” by the crazed authorities. Forced to take drugs that induce nausea and to watch graphically violent movies for two weeks, while simultaneously listening to Beethoven, Alex is slowly rewired and re-moulded. But he rebels, especially against the use of classical music as punishment.

Pleading with his therapists to turn the music off, he tells them that “Ludwig van” did nothing wrong, he “only made music.” He tells the doctors it’s a sin to turn him against Beethoven and take away his love of music. But they ignore him. At the end of it all, Alex is no longer able to listen to his favorite music without feeling distressed. A bit like that schoolboy in Derby who now sticks his fingers in his ears when he hears Mozart.

By Alex Deane

Being a good citizen is great; acting like one is even better

Chris Addison, aka the ever-loveable and hilariously error-prone Ollie Reader in BBC Two comedy ‘The Thick of It’, has used his column in today’s Evening Standard to put the boot in to Big Brother Watch and our sister organisation the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

His ire is focussed on our decision to question the wisdom of Harrow Council’s snoopers army initiative.

According to Chris, Harrow’s search for 2,000 people who will report on public nuisances such as vandalism, rowdiness and fly-tipping, “sounds perfectly reasonable”; as it does. But he then says “I must confess I thought we were supposed to do that sort of thing anyway”.

Again he’s absolutely right - and there-in lies the problem. Being a good citizen shouldn’t require a £100,000 scheme provided by your local authority to spy on your neighbours. It’s creating a community spirit and having a quiet word with your fellow citizens if they’re doing something which is effecting your local environment; or informing the police if you think that they might be guilty of a more serious crime. If you see something wrong, you shouldn’t need a badge or a reward to report it or try to help to fix it.

In addition, Harrow Council is the only borough in London to have moved to fortnightly bin collections. Research has shown that fly-tipping has generally increased a lot more in those local authorities putting in place fortnightly collections than in other authorities.

Whilst fly-tipping is obviously a public nuisance, it is legitimate to question the motives behind reducing the number of bin collections one week and recruiting 2,000 residents to spy on those that create enviro-crime the next. One might say that Conservative-controlled Harrow Council are trying to clamp down on the effects of previous bad policy choices – their position is driven by failure, both in their waste removal and moreover in local policing – and a badge or or an incentive to snoop isn’t the right response to that.

Chris, and for that matter, Ollie may not like the fact that the TPA and BBW exist to question the schemes that emanate from our politicians and paymasters, but we are here to voice the concerns of the silent majority…rather than parrot the text of council press releases.

By Dylan Sharpe

It could be worse - you could be in Australia

The notion might seem counter-intuitive to those of us who picture the idyllic beaches, who dream of the happy sub-tropical lifestyle, who grew up humming this - but it really is worse in Australia.

As Paul Sheehan makes clear in a searing article in the Sydney Morning Herald, whilst "Australians have this outdated idea of themselves as easy-going pragmatists...

we are becoming a nation of petty laws and fearful citizens, too gutless to confront this creeping, productivity-killing, initiative-destroying, community-sapping tide of compulsion and constriction, much of it driven by a corrosive ideology of the need for government control and intervention.

As in all things, the argument is made best by telling example rather than argument alone - his piece is full of them.  Perhaps the most striking is this, an insurance requirement sent to a group of women wanting to run a fundraising fete for their school -

''The applicant must provide a copy of a certificate of currency prior to each event showing public liability insurance to the value of $10,000,000 for each fete …'' That is not a misprint.

There's more where that came from.  Head down under to the SMH site and have a look.

By Alex Deane (hat-tip: IDM)