Review of The Decade

I recently watched History of Now: The Story of the Noughties on BBC 2 which can be on BBC IPlayer. This was split into 3 programs the 2nd and 3rd of which were the most interesting for me as this tackled the social aspects of Britain’s society. These programs can be found here

The second program (which included Lib Dem blogger and co editor of Liberal Democrat Voice Mark Pack) examined how politicians used popular culture like pop music and how Jade Goody paved the way for David Cameron. The program also mentions how parties now concentrate on winnable seats, leaving safe seat alone. and how they even use the MOSAIC methodology that supermarkets use for targeting political messages.

The second program also covers the development of the Chav and how it has become harder to climb the social ladder. It suggest that the Chav has given up being aspirational because the ladders have been removed. Its now much harder to achieve without an education. We are simply conned by reading about WAG’s and the cult of celebrity into believing that we can climb this social ladder.

The third program covers globalisation and how Britain is are the heart of it. Which millions of Brits buy up property aboard and millions of immigrants came to Britain to work. I found this very interesting as many believe that us Brits perhaps feel superior to our European counterparts. We moan about Europeans working here but forget that there are many Brits living aboard. We also go on lads or lad’et holidays to eastern Europe and trash the place while drinking huge amount of cheap beer. Thanks to cheap flights to unheard of ex military airfields.

I to admit to having done this myself on a stag do in Prague. However I think its because we work so hard that we also party hard. You could say its hard wired into our culture now. Also the drink is so cheap that we just go mad for it. We love a bargain. We try too keep up with our peers, drinking the shots they buy etc and then don’t think about the consequences because for that one night, we don’t want to worry about them.

The program also shows how influential Britain still is. with its Premiership football being watched all over the world. British pop music as popular as ever and also British TV formats exported to every corner of the globe. We are still a very important Island in this world.

We have certainly had some massive highs like winning the Olympics and lows like the 7/7 London bombings the next day. Its quite amazing how the banking and credit bumble bust right at the end of the decade, the same bubble that made the decade at the beginning (the one that gave us the money in the first place).

For myself I actually enjoyed the noughties on a personal level because despite that bad things that happened I agree with Andrew Marr in the final program. That it would be easy to say that the decade could be viewed as a time of enormous delusion and folly but it was also a time when many people enjoyed life more. I for one think this is very much the case.

So what do you think about the last decade, Good or bad?


And on Another Note

I can’t help but wonder why all the documentaries appear to be on Channel for on the BBC. Why is ITV not showing more documentaries? Mark Reckons has some advice for ITV’s falling viewing figures here in The trouble with ITV.