Good news no news and Pink Floyd

The news was pretty bad this morning: mass protests, suicide bombers, massacres, imminent economic apocalypse, racism at Euro 2012... We surf and buy and enjoy ourselves on the internet but we are also exposed to simultaneous bad news from all directions. There is never any good news because good news is not news and anyone pushing good news stories is accused of burying our heads in the sand. So, what if there had been an internet throughout history: by some strange technological peculiarity an ancient Greek person had managed to manufacture and lay down the World Wide Web. The Dark Ages would no longer be dark and all kinds of shenanigans would have been revealed along with all the conflicts that followed right up to the WW1. Starting with the Bible, World history has been, in the absence of objective records, ordered into all kinds of storylines. In Britain, of course, the glory and magnificence of our empire and achievements permeates school text books and our ‘culture’ but what if there had been a web cam on the shores of West Africa in the 17^th century? What impression would we have got of the world at these times? It would have looked like a complete mess while certain countries were getting away with murder. We don’t have those records we just have what we have. BBC Four frequently repeats programmes about Pink Floyd. On Friday night there were two – and both were repeated again later on and then again on Sunday evening. There are documentaries about other bands – The Bee Gees, Toot and The Maytals and even easy listening nights - but Pink Floyd rockumentaries keep popping up. BBC4 is presenting its view of what its idea of who was/is a musical immortal. Is this because top producers at the BBC are still honed from the classes that like Pink Floyd – educated ‘progressive’ music? The BBC presents its view of popular music just as we were presented with a version of history and one that we will be visiting again, no doubt, with the Jubilee.