US sweeps up at Euro MTV awards
American artists dominated the 2000 MTV Europe Music Awards on Thursday, taking 10 of the evening's 12 major awards at the ceremony, which was held at the Globe Arena in Stockholm, Sweden. The results were particularly galling for the UK pop industry. Britain's Department for Culture Media and Sports claims that 'the music industry is one the UK's biggest and most culturally significant creative industries' and that 'our main markets are the US, Europe and Japan'. In fact UK record sales account for just 0.2 per cent of the US market.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's New Labour government courted the industry from its election in 1997, insisting that pop music was making a more significant contribution to exports than steel (a statistic true largely by default - the steel industry all but collapsed in the 1980s). Stars like Oasis' Gallagher brothers were invited to meet the PM at Number Ten, and ministers dispatched to rock and pop awards. The rewards are impressive, but not earth shattering. The Sunday Times' showbiz earnings league puts presenter-DJ Chris Evans top at £35 million (due largely though to a one-off sale of his Ginger productions), closely followed by boxer Lennox Lewis (£26 million) and Elton John (£20 million).
Now culture secretary Chris Smith is nervously following the chart performance of yesterday's stars: Oasis have stalled while the Spice Girls - second most recognisable Britons abroad, according to a British Council survey of young people overseas - only just scraped into the US album charts at 39. Britain's great white hope Robbie Williams, boy band pin-up turned bad boy rock star, was awarded best song at Stockholm, but looks set to burn out through exhaustion, leaving the industry's future pinned on London's soulful All Saints. The government might come to regret its wager on the charts: the only other countries to raise a significant proportion of foreign earnings through pop music are Jamaica and the Congo.
Who let the dogs out?
Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss should refuse the injunction sought by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the killers of toddler James Bulger. The injunction would prevent all press reporting of their adult lives once they are released from detention. But their future was long ago made a matter of legitimate public interest when, as 10-year olds, they were subjected to a widely publicised trial and were sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure. Those who fear that Venables and Thompson will be subject to vigilante revenge attacks may have good cause, but they should address themselves to the prosecuting authorities.
If there really is a mob baying for the boy's blood now it is because they were treated as public enemies back in 1992. The two freak child killers were cruelly and irrationally exploited by politicians and broadsheet editors as a symbol of the state of the nation. Psychiatrists, experts and pundits of all kinds played along. Trying and sentencing the children for murder in an adult court only served to give the official stamp of approval to the hysterical atmosphere. For that reason, Venables and Thompson still provoke atavistic feelings of fear and hatred today. A gagging injunction now would simply sweep this ugly misdeed under the carpet. If the courts now believe their procedures were wrong they should quash the sentences, not gag the press.
It may give scant comfort to the rehabilitated killers, but the authorities having determined that the boys would be subject to the rigours of a very public criminal procedure should not be allowed to shirk their responsibility for Venables' and Thompson's lives.
Green protectionism
The world climate conference, which began at Kyoto in Japan in 1997, moved to the Hague last week, as leading nations attacked each other over 'greenhouse' gases. All eyes are on the US, which, with only four per cent of the world's population produces 20 per cent of carbon emissions. Britain led the attack boasting that 'the UK is one of the few developed countries to have published a clear strategy for delivering its 12.5 per cent target under the Kyoto Protocol'.
But while environment minister Michael Meacher embraced the green agenda on global warming, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the European Bioscience Conference on 17 November 2000 that Britain must 'invest in our future productive base if it wants future prosperity for all'. Dismissing environmentalists' fears of genetic modification Blair told of his 'determination not to let us slip into any form of anti-science' and that 'there is as yet little wider public understanding of the revolutionary potential of biotechnology'.
The different messages coming from different world players over the environment are confusing until they are related to their distinctive economic interests. Energy consumption, the preoccupation of the Hague summit closely corresponds to economic growth:
Between 1990 and 1996 US energy consumption expanded from 83.9 to 93.3 quadrillion British Thermal Units (qBtu). Over the same period, Western Europe's consumption increased more modestly from 60 to 64 (qBtu), while the Far East's overtook the US, moving from 74.4 to 101.4 (qBtu) and East Europe's collapsed from 73.6 to 52.4 (qBtu).
It was Western fears of its emerging East Asian rivals that forced the pace of the original Kyoto summit, tempting them to put the brakes on the Tiger economies under the rubric of saving the planet. For the US, such a strategy carried risks, as the size of the US economy was also put in the frame. By contrast Europe's much weaker economic growth made limits on energy consumption sound more palatable.
Britain's boasts of meeting targets for energy reduction should be seen in the context of its declining industrial base - the once workshop of the world now counts just 10 per cent of its workers in industry. Lauding energy reduction in the UK is just putting a positive gloss on economic decline, as well as wishing the same misfortune on Britain's competitors.
On the other hand, one area where Britain has made considerable investments is biotechnology. Though gentleman farmers like Greenpeace's retiring leader Lord Melchett and Prince Charles denounce genetic modification, biotechnology is an important growth area for Britain, hence its insistence on growth there, if not in industry.
The British press dress protectionism as environmental concern. The Guardian newspaper denounces America's 'international irresponsibility', while offering this useful tip to its readers:
'Try to find local sources for food and other goods, reducing the need for travelling long distances. Resist buying items that have been air freighted to Britain.' (17 November 2000).
Cynically, the Guardian's own environment correspondent John Vidal recently mused that the alleged link between greenhouse gases and global warming 'is nothing to do with facts'. 'Global warming seems to fulfil all the elements of true myth. It binds society together, it warns everyone against folly, teaches us to think of our neighbours, has innocent parties (the poor) and guilty (the Americans, especially).' (11 November 2000) Or, to put it another way, global warming is a lie; and for sad little-England chauvinists who envy the Americans, it is a good one. -- James Heartfield