Ministry Of Unculture

Margaret Hodge - who in one of those satisfactory accidents is MP for Barking - has come under deserved fire for bashing the Proms:

The audiences for some of many of our greatest cultural events - I'm thinking particularly of the Proms - is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of [Britain's cultural identity].

This is nonsense, of course. The Proms represent one of the largest celebrations of classical music in the world, attracting talent from all parts of the globe.

If Hodge thinks the audiences are all white middle class fogies of a certain age, she can't have been to many. Not that an opportunity to bash the middle class should be passed up of course, if you're a politician of a certain stripe.

Yet according to the Guardian's obligatory pre-leak of her ill-informed blithering, her attack extended much further than the Proms series:

She will also propose that a commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the accession of Henry VIII to the throne next year could be an opportunity to explore the strengths and weaknesses of British history...

What?! Our history is a fact. Studying it should illumine our own time and educate us about the origins of the society we live in. It is not - not! - an opportunity to apply cheap value judgements to past events based on modern pieties which may themselves prove all too transient.

Someone who speaks of the "strengths and weaknesses" of history, rather than the similarities and differences between historical attitudes and our own, is talking a language they do not understand.

She also said of Henry VIII that

a deeper understanding of his reign may help the important debate on England starting to emerge.

Again: what?! England is a country - and a rather fine old one at that - not a debating point. A deeper understanding of its history would indeed benefit those trying to run it - starting with Margaret Hodge herself, perhaps.

Apparently this woman is our Minister of Culture. Clearly one of those departments which, in the manner anticipated by Orwell - that's George Orwell, an old writer, Mrs Hodge - stand for the opposite of what their title suggests.