Fill Your Head With Rock

Five Live are asking listeners to vote for the key record of the Tony Blair era, illustrated by a picture of him playing the guitar left handed. The top ten you can choose from includes: The Verve, Robbie Williams, Kaiser Chiefs, Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay, James Blunt, David Gray, Oasis, Franz Ferdinand and the Libertines. I am genuinely amazed that none of the diversity advisers that the BBC has invested in over the last ten years has thought fit to point out to them that there's nothing there by anyone who isn't white and male. I'm not suggesting that there should be a quota system but this reeks of somebody's cloth-eared idea of what constitutes "proper music by people who can play their instruments, like". Dizzee Rascal? The Streets? Girls Aloud? Jamelia? Amy Winehouse? Lily Allen? The Chemical Brothers? Damn this indie-rock orthodoxy! It's more suffocating than the old Light Programme.