37. 10 Songs for the Coming and Going of a Golden Age

Things Can Only Get Better - D:Ream
As Good As it Gets - Gene
Waving Flags - British Sea Power
Time for Heroes - The Libertines
I Get Along - Pet Shop Boys
Harrowdown Hill - Thom Yorke or Death of a Scientist - Mull Historical Society
Shoot the Dog - George Michael
Kingdom of Doom - The Good, the Bad and the Queen
Snowball - Elbow
Cunts are Still Running the World - Jarvis Cocker
You Are the Generation that Bought More Shoes and you get what you Deserve - Johnny Boy

Ooh, a bit political ... but not really. It's more an attempt to present songs of the Blair Years as a kind of storyboard.
It's quite a narrow framework; in other tapes, there'll be a broader take on protest songs, and obviously there's a lot more anti (and pro, don't doubt it) Bush stuff than Tony Blair stuff. Furthermore, British "political" or protest music of the last years has been pretty grim - the George Michael song being a case in point. But I don't think this is a terrible collection, there are various aspects covered from anti-globalisation riots (Libertines) to immigration (British Sea Power) to David Kelly (Thom Yorke) to Peter Mandelson (Pet Shop Boys) and the tremendously prescient song by Johnny Boy.
So, I'll try to avoid speaking politically now, that would be terribly gauche - all i'll say is how I seem to be perenially and increasingly out of step with the general view, I wonder if I'm a contrarian above all, though I hope not, I just think most people get most things wrong, so I coincidentally find myself disagreeing ...
Furthermore, I've used "apologist" quite often as a term of accusation recently - while I rather think that's what I've become for certain things as well. It's very hard, if you've got an intrinsic leaning, to unpick all the goods and bads of it, to not subconsciously toe a party line, whatever the party is, or even if you don't think there is a party.

I claim some small degree of prescience myself with this, as it was written more than two years ago, when subprime was a word all but the most devoted readers of the FT (hello, Mr Key) were yet to hear, when everything did still, basically, appear to be fine and dandy ...

You see, it was the strangest year,
my boy, to be alive, since
Summer'd played its card by May
and winter scarce evinced
those memories (to tell to doubting
offspring, perhaps, decades hence) -
hunched shoulders and shrivelled brains -
the chill, the freeze, passed, tense.

You see, it was a glorious chance,
my boy, to be set loose, where
London's louche lads turning blue
had ill-earned lucre, spare
for idling dressed as teambuilding;
happy -just - to veil contempt,
preying on the dumbed down rich
was manna heaven sent.

They say he was a wasted chance,
my boy, for what, they can't say
beyond headlines absorbed on
rolling reams of tart cliche.
They talk of damaged legacy,
politics and values tainted,
of million empty words he spun
and empty pictures painted.

You see, we've all our own take,
my boy, of that curious time
where we lived like bitter kings
complaining through our prime.
The dogs the country thinks its gone to,
circling, while the phoney war
plays out its final sunstarved stage,
will mock all dogfights gone before.