This Temple of Souvenirs and Trinkets is Dedicated to the Almighty Market

If one ever needed further proof of the BBC's decline from a 'Temple of the Arts and Muses ... dedicated to Almighty God' to a corporate den of iniquity (from today's Times):

The BBC is spending £3 million on branded hoodies, mugs, umbrellas and promotional knick-knacks. 

The freebies will be given to staff and viewers to promote programmes and “corporate identities”. The money, equal to nearly 20,000 TV licences, will also be spent on fleeces, fridge magnets and bags, according to a tender document circulated to potential suppliers.

So much for the Reithian 'prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.'

We now worship the Gods of the Market Place. Our braindead society is kept alive on the artificial respirations of consumerism and corporatism.When will the modern right realise that it created the vapid liberal culture that tyrannises us? When will they realise that the marketisation of society has turned once noble institutions like the BBC into a purveyors of hoodies and mugs, whose chief contribution to modern culture is soulless game shows, allegedly comedic panel programmes and other unwatchable and unlistenable drivel. Norman Tebbit has, admittedly, finally begun to realise the role of the Thatcherite right in all this. 'I sometimes wonder,' he said, 'whether our economic reforms led to an individualism in other values, in ways we didn’t anticipate.' But why did it take thirty years for him to just begin to realise this?

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

I truly worry that what has been good will be neglected, that we will live among great cultural ruins, if not physical ruins too. We are clearly in an epoch of rejection. We dislike the past, we mistrust its achievements, and instead we trust fully in 'Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind'.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

Kipling wrote that astonishing, unforgettable poem after the devastation of the First World War -- devastation which we now know is permanent, and which we seem to have endorsed. The war was the beginning of the end for the old world, and we are clearly happy about it. Bulwarks against this change, like the BBC, are all surrendering if they have not already. The alarming thing about our descent back into barbarism is that so many people seem to be willing it -- they enjoy it. They think they are advancing things, pushing forward with the times. It's so heart-wrenching to see.