Blakeney

Eighty something

The 1980s are strangely in vogue this summer in London. Shortly after the BBC adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker-winning novel The Line Of Beauty, for which I was lucky enough to review the subtitles for the DVD release, comes the National Theatre’s production of Market Boy, a new play about a market trader apprentice in mid ‘80s Thatcherite Romford. It’s a fairly meaningless play but a visually rich production, with a cringingly familiar soundtrack and great attention to detail to the fashions and crazes of the time, from smiley faces to fluorescent cardboard. The BBC production of The Line Of Beauty failed in this regard as its characters looked far too much out of the current era. Not one of them wore pastel polka dots, shoulder pads, Fergie bows, chunky plastic beads and bracelets, long dangly earrings, big bouffon hair or big eyebrows. Obviously the characters in The Line Of Beauty are far removed from a working-class Essex market but as I’m currently creating subtitles for the third series of Howards' Way from circa 1987, I can confirm that characters aspiring to the upper classes - and those allegedly working in the fashion industry - sported all of this finery. Market Boy does however contain its own inaccuracies – many of the songs played in the first half hadn’t been released in 1985, the year it is set. And Zammo from Grange Hill’s drug problem, amusingly referred to when the lead character is offered an ecstasy tablet, was surely later on than that. And who was taking ecstasy in 1985? (According to The Line Of Beauty, it was cocaine that was our drug of choice) Or have the years gone by quicker than I care to imagine?

As Michael Billington’s Guardian review points out, Mrs Thatcher gets off lightly in Market Boy. She is portrayed as an icon, a Britannic goddess, and gets cheers and wild applause from the audience – all of which grate a little when you can remember all too clearly what happened to your country under her rule. She wasn’t an angel, she was a harpy. For starters, she made 12 million people actually want to watch Howards' Way on a Sunday night and actually be interested in crushingly dull scenes of board meetings talking rubbish about consortiums and bankers drafts. People forget all too quickly about how bad things really were – go out and buy those DVDs of Howards' Way when they are released and think about what you might become if you vote David Cameron into power at the next election.

REBECCA

June 10th 2006, Vicky and Andy's Wedding

Public Sector Pay Freeze

My colleagues at the local power plant were today agitated by Gord’s call for a prolonged period of wage restraint in the public services. The Chancellor indicated that during the next few years the annual increase in public sector pay should be kept low, preferably less than 2.25%. Given that Gord’s own economic policy assumes an annual inflation rate of 2%, this new PPP (public pay proclamation) effectively represents a real terms pay freeze.

Gord was not the only senior member of the Red Team to infuriate local power plant workers today. His former best mate, Tone, suggested that the recent rate of improvement in schools and hospitals has been insufficient given the additional money Gord has allowed him to spend on public services. Tone wants public servants to raise their game and deliver further improvements, and soon. This is purely personal – Tone wants to take all the credit for any service improvements before Gord takes the reins of the Red Team’s bandwagon.

So, the Prime Minister says public services are not good enough and the Chancellor warns public sector staff not to expect pay rises. We all recognise that public services need to deliver high standards and use resources efficiently. However, these surly messages from Tone and Gord will neither boost morale nor motivate improved performance amongst public sector staff.

Yet all is not bleak in the local power plant. At least DaveCam loves us. Today he admitted that during recent decades the Blue Team had been wrong to adopt the blinkered mantra ‘private good, public bad’ and ill-advised to characterise public servants as being idle, inefficient and generally rubbish. Instead, DaveCam insists that private enterprise can learn greatly from public sector management, and that public servants are talented, hard working types who deliver valuable services that enrich our lives. Moreover, DaveCam’s best mate, Georgie, recently stated that the Blue Team will not seek tax cuts at the expense of investment in public services.

So, while the Red Team is criticising the public sector and threatening its staff with a pay freeze, the Blue Team is defending services and lavishing public servants with praise and affection. The times they are a changin'....