I'd Like To Teach The World to Shut The Fuck Up continued By Silver Fox

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It begins. A chain of events that leaves us all - every last one of us - mired in a horrifying nightmare spawned by the imagination of one resentful underachiever. It's happening now, in fact. I'm not sure about where this latest lunatic scheme was hatched - though I'm guessing the temporarily indolent notional politico isn't all that wide of the mark - but hatched it most certainly has been. And, as every authority on the subject knows (from Robert Louis Stephenson to Bugs Bunny): you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

So now, we're faced with this grisly reality: the government wants every child between the ages of eight and sixteen to be given the opportunity to learn an instrument. There, I thought that'd shock you.

Allegedly, this crackpot notion has the backing of the Prime Minister himself. Dear Tony, who loves a bit of a boogie himself (he plays the guitar, lest we be allowed to forget it for a second or two) is said to be right behind the scheme. Quite what his thinking about this is isn't immediately apparent to me - you would think that a man who has fathered as many children as he has would have had even the most raging thirst for the inept musical performances of children thoroughly slaked by now, but it appears not.

Perhaps though, it is another example of the poor chap feeling a little lonely in his strange little world, and he wants a little bit of company in his demented realm - just like he did over Cool Britannia, Saddam Hussein's Instant-Apocalypse Kit and sundry other delusions.

What's the fun of a world of make-believe if nobody plays along, eh? Even the most imaginative of pint-sized wannabe cowboys appreciates a real, flesh-and-blood Indian to chase around the park, after all. In Tony's world, might not the reedy droning of sixteen descant recorders playing hesitant versions of Scarborough Fair (slightly out of time with each other) represent the apotheosis of sonic splendour? If so, you can't blame him for not wanting us to miss out.

Speaking practically though, I think it's barely worth stating that not all of us can make the kind of conceptual leaps that Our Leader seems to find so easy, and for many of us, the prospect of widespread Greensleeves abuse amongst our kids is a disturbing one indeed. From personal experience, I can tell you that it takes a great deal of time and effort before you can play an instrument at a level tolerable to even the most tolerant audiences.

I myself spent almost three quarters of an hour exploring the intricacies of the harmonica (I could have done it quicker, but I went for a big poo) and I believe that for a more complex instrument - the piano, say, or the electric flugelhorn - it can take almost double that. But even leaving aside the question of mass infanticide provoked by an upsurge in ham-fisted, early attempts at Twinkle, twinkle, Little Star, there are other concerns.

Firstly, (and as an idealist, I hate to say it) how is it to be funded? At present, nobody seems sure, but it'll cost a pretty penny to equip every child in Britain with so much as a comb and paper.

Musical instruments don't come cheap (not even at Antone's Guitars, Beverley Road, where value is only equalled by excellence of service) and frankly, I can't see many schools stumping up the required mazuma. And even if they could - perhaps by banning games and channelling the money into something more worthwhile than hostility, bloodshed, and nascent homo-eroticism - should they?

I'd Like To Teach The World to Shut The Fuck Up continued..

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