Friday, April 18, 2014

Oasis of oddness...


Blurred vision? How else to explain the very interesting 'aberration' of the Lib Dem result in the graph below: Sebastian Payne's article about Britpop (the "an outer-suburban, middle-class fantasy of central London streetlife, with exclusively metropolitan models" [Jon Savage]) in The Spectator yesterday: "Britpop 20 years on: the Tory voters who love Oasis".

The article highlights a YouGov poll that asks questions about the quirky musical 'anti-grunge' sub-genre; the results are split depending on region, age, gender, 'social grade' and UK political party voting intentions: however Oasis wins hands-down in ALL sections apart from those intending to vote Lib Dem (graph) in which Labour and Conservative are relatively equal, UKIP similar split but the Lib Dems the complete opposite (maybe the poll was taken in Lewisham Lib Dem club?).


3 comments:

Paul said...

In Bob Stanley's book (Yeah Yeah Yeah) he says that in British music that the Beatles were always the elephant in the room, everybody wanted to be like them but nobody would come out and actually be them - and then came Oasis (famously called Quoasis by Damon Albarn) and Blur who both wanted to be the Beatles - now twenty years on people don't remember them apart from us musos.

Point of all this? Well Lib Dems have for most of their lives been the party that most people hoped who add some sense of balance, some sort of quality control in British politics - the one thing we wanted post cold war but were too scared of, the old phrase 'be careful for what you wish for' no seems so relevant, five years into the worst coalition in recent memory people if you are old right or old left, or the best thing that's happened since 1997 if you wanted too much lime in your tequila.

Jon Savage is one of my writing heroes, 'England.s Dreaming' is never far from my elbow - he coined the phrase 'Little Tory Boys' to describe The Jam, I'm sure I can hear Paul Weller spinning on his Rickenbacker somewhere every time I read that line.

Have a good Easter.

Paul said...

Sorry some typos.

'be careful for what you wish for' now seems so relevant.

Ignore the word 'people' after the phrase 'in recent memory'.

Span Ows said...

Hi Paul, no worries it was understandable - just! - without the corrections. 'Little Tory Boys' eh? Damn, no wonder I liked them so much :-)