Boris, Baloo, and the Bare Necessities
MESS with tradition and the flag-waving pomp of the very British institution that is ‘Last Night of the Proms’ at your peril as the ‘young at heart’ BBC chiefs are finding out.
Talk of scrapping ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ from this flamboyant occasion has triggered a massive backlash against Auntie Beeb and shown it’s not just the government forced into taking U-turns.
And to show the strength of feeling aroused amongst ordinary folk, two versions of Land of Hope and Glory are currently topping the charts; both by much-missed wartime songbird Dame Vera Lynn.
Back-tracking as quickly as decently possible, the BBC insists there are no plans to scrap either ditty; and it will be played this year but only instrumental versions to comply with Covid-19 rules. Next year will back to normal.
There is no audience for this plague year but there are other ways of getting the words across - now homes across the nation, and many abroad who tune in for the music and pageantry, will be belting out the lyrics in their front rooms...and what is to stop a professional taking the lead with the musicians?
The reality is - as the BBC’s ‘independent’ news team announced - there are ‘key members of the orchestra’ who have concerns about links with the ‘British Empire, colonialism and slavery’. Surely they knew about this traditional end to the Proms when they took the gig? The conductor person spoke out...she is from Finland and while she may have studied Elgar, is lacking in the history of the Proms.
Panic about race
Trevor Phillips, former top bod at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, believes the BBC’s top decision makers are once again in a panic about race. He said: “What you have is rooms full of white men panicking that someone is going to think they are racist.”
Both songs are celebrations of freedom and liberty and nostalgic ditties about being British. The words are hopelessly outdated - but why change them? People who go to this final night of the season, many of them flag-waving visitors from around the globe, or watch it on the box lap it up. It remains harmless and muchloved entertainment.
This hullabaloo comes as ‘The Bare Necessities’ has been voted the most uplifting song from the world of Disney. The tune is taken from the classic 1967 cartoon The Jungle Book and is sung by Baloo (the bear) and Mowgli (the human hero) - and based on a novel set in India during the days of Empire and penned by Rudyard Kipling.
Quickly steering away from a childlike suggestion (an attempt at humour) that The Bare Necessities might be substituted as a grand-finale; it was interesting to see Prime Minister Boris Johnson - who some might say has some bruin-like qualities himself was baited into joining the Proms debate.
“I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, about our culture, and we stopped this fight of self-recrimination and wetness,” he said, admitting he wanted to get his feelings off his chest.
The PM’s comment come in a post-exam chaos time when he apologised for the computer’s downgrading of education results. He told school pupils during a visit to the classroom frontline the process was ‘derailed by a mutant algorithm’.
No mention of the screeching U-turn involved in the exams but Mr Johnson might cringe with embarrassment at the front page of The Metro and a picture of a teenage mutant ninja turtle (dunno which one, but he wears a mask and has a shell on his back) and a headline: ‘Mutant Mayhem’.
Education is Covid football
Education has become the biggest political football of the summer and heads have already rolled in the aftermath of the fiasco and especially in need of an investigation into what went wrong, particularly the hibernation over testing the efficiency of said computer programme ahead of time.
However, there’s no let up in the world of schools and colleges as lead items in the news hefty fines are on the cards for parents who hold their offspring back from the classroom because of Covid-10 fears and the latest government U-turn face coverings in schools in local lockdown areas.
Scotland took the lead by announcing students must wear masks in corridors and other communal areas. England has followed suit offering the flexibility of school heads but making it mandatory in areas with additional coronavirus regulations while they remain in place.
Once again, No10 says it is following the science; it is the bickering scientists who are to blame for the U-turns in the first place. It might be easier to build roundabouts in the autobahn of pandemic politics.
The boffins at the World Health Organisation hop from one foot to another too. The latest advice from WHO is that it recommends face coverings for children aged over 12 in the same conditions as when worn by adults.
The right to education is absolute. It is a bare necessity of life - kids learn social skills, why racism is wrong and why black lives matter. They should also pick up a bit of history as well and how a country such as Great Britain (despite being symbolised as a lion rather than a bear) came to be a welcoming, tolerant and multi-cultural society.
It still offers everyone a taste of freedom, fiercely guarded by laws...which are ideas reflected in the words of two songs that form the grand finale of the Proms.