Month: September 2013

All art involves distortion and recreation. Myths and legends take this to a high degree, with multiple versions of the same story that often vary wildly in details. So it is justified to come up with a new take on an old tale. Is it also justifiable to treat myths as a grab bag of names and plots for your latest project? Nobody complains when Wagner does it. But lots of people complained on Twitter when the BBC’s latest Saturday night blockbuster Atlantis did.

The big political theme of my life has been the rise of free market values and the decline of collectivism.  When I was first old enough to be aware of what was going on politically, in the seventies, the state played a big role in things.  It would intervene and manage things quite extensively.  The results of that intervention varied.  Some were quite good – like universal education and health provision.  Others were perverse or just embarrassing.  Keeping British Leyland going was a bad idea in retrospect.  The people who spearheaded the radical moves to dismantle the state’s role and encourage us all to become entrepreneurs were the Tories.  This was a bit of a departure for the one time representatives of the upper classes, but it was a very successful one.  Even when it didn’t win them elections, which it usually did, the radicalism generally won the argument.  Nowadays even avowedly left wing politicians don’t want to go back to the old failed statist ways of the past.