Back in a Bit

Historical film

At Christmas, my mother sent us both some money to be used, she insisted, to buy something we could enjoy rather than putting it towards boring things like phone bills. After some consideration, we decided to put it together and buy ourselves a cute little DVD player, which now sits proudly atop our television. In choosing the player, I put quite a lot of effort into ensuring that it would be able to play a variety of formats from recordable media.

The question, then, is what to burn. We could, for example, download and burn episodes of our favourite American animated sitcoms in an effort to relieve some of the arguments over control of the cable remote, but that would be naughty and illegal and stuff. Hmm. Anyway, the answer must be found in movies with more open licences, and where better to begin than with the Prelinger Archives of ephemeral films.

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Leave her to it

In 1966 the Government requested that the Minister of Technology (who was also the former Postmaster-General) travelled to Sweden, to investigate the new phenomenon of an all-music radio station. This investigation would form part of the preparation for the launch of Radio 1, originally established in response to pirate stations and now often regarded as the flagship of the Corporation’s radio output. Upon his return from studying this new broadcasting format, Mr Wedgwood Benn was quoted by the Daily Mail as say that it “would seem to be the answer, although it is not for the Government to tell the BBC how to run its own house.”

This remark seems poignant not only in the aftermath of The Hutton “Inquiry” but also by the fact that it was made by the man we know as Tony Benn, who famously spoke out against the invasion of Iraq.