One Song to the Tune of Another

There is a comedy panel game on Radio 4 called Sorry I haven’t a clue. I stopped listening to that channel a while ago because the BBC news coverage was too annoying. I used to love Radio 4, in fact, but now …

One of the rounds in the show was one song to the tune of another. It is exactly as it says it is. The joke is usually in the choice of song and tune, often the performance itself isn’t that interesting. You might get Strangers in the Night to the tune of some Spice Girls’ hit. Moderately amusing.

I’ve come to realise that most of the time we’re being fed something like this by the main stream media:

• Everything is fine
• Our owners aren’t burning everything down, in fact life is quite pleasant
• Government incompetence hasn’t cost 200,000 (and counting) lives

Also, if you look to the so-called opposition

• Starmer hasn’t broken every single one of the promises he made to the membership of his party
• Jewish socialists aren’t 31 times more likely to be expelled from the party for anti-semitism
• They don’t broadly support most of the Tory policies
• They aren’t on record saying how help should only go to the deserving poor - which is divisive and disgusting

On the international stage

• Biden hasn’t broken his promise on student loan debt - he was responsible for the law that says bankruptcy doesn’t mean the debt is written off, in fact.
• Drones aren’t still killing people without due process, and often the wrong people (whatever that means in practice)
• Idiots aren’t beating war drums in China’s direction

Instead the world is lovely, simple and anodyne, the simple words comforting and easy on the ear.

So the song ignores all these things, the song tells us everything is fine.

The tune is the warmongering and brutal disregard for anything but finance capital’s bottom line, the tune rescues the banks.

The song says you matter, the tune says you don’t.

The song says climate change is being dealt with - the tune ignores the consensus about climate change.

Even though the consensus is the large majority of people in the West - the politicians are not there to represent that consensus and never have been.

The song continues to tell us infinite growth is possible, including population. The tune says your rights as a human being are becoming meaningless if you aren’t a billionaire and they will try to crush you if you stand up to them.

The song says you live in a democracy, the tune says they will ignore what people want and stamp all over their rights whenever they feel like it.

Let’s stop listening to the song, and become aware of the tune.