It was once one of the world’s leading centres of learning it seems to have lost its focus and given way to left wing hysteria. Now we learn that the University of Oxford is considering scrapping sheet music for being ‘too colonial’ after staff raised concerns about the ‘complicity in white supremacy’ in music curriculums.

No I am not trying out a belated April Fool joke; this really is happening in modern Britain.

Professors are set to reform their music courses to move away from the classic repertoire, which includes the likes of Beethoven and Mozart, university staff arguing that the current curriculum focuses on ‘white European music from the slave period.’

It claimed that teaching musical notation had ‘not shaken off its connection to its colonial past’ and would be ‘a slap in the face’ to some students. And it added that musical skills should no longer be compulsory because the current repertoire’s focus on ‘white European music’ causes ‘students of colour great distress.’ It is thought that music writing will also be reformed to be more inclusive.

Does that mean Rap, Grunge and Heavy Metal music being part of the future syllabus I wonder?

Thankfully, the proposals have upset some faculty members who argued that it was unfair to accuse those teaching music from before 1900 of being concerned with just ‘white.’

All this nonsense comes after one Oxford college removed the name of an 18th-century slave trader from its main library earlier this year – but has defied calls to take down his statue.

All Souls College reviewed its link to Christopher Codrington, a Barbados-born colonial governor, in the wake of last year’s Black Lives Matter movement. The former college fellow who died in 1710 bequeathed £10,000 ( a huge amount at the time) to the library which has since been unofficially known as the Codrington Library. 

A marble statue by Edward Cheere of the benefactor has been standing in the library for centuries and the college says it has no plans to take it down despite the clamour from students.

The All Souls governing body said: ‘Rather than seek to remove it the College will investigate further forms of memorialisation and contextualisation within the library, which will draw attention to the presence of enslaved people on the Codrington plantations, and will express the College’s abhorrence of slavery.’

Come on please; Codrington turned his toes up over three hundred years ago!

The All Souls review also found that Codrington’s wealth ‘derived largely from his family’s activities in the West Indies, where they owned plantations worked by enslaved people of African descent.’ They do not bother to mention that these ‘enslaved people’ were for the most part sold to traders by their Chiefs or even their family and friends.

The college claims it has undertaken a number of measures to address the colonial legacy, including erecting a memorial plaque in memory of those who worked on the Caribbean plantations. 

And let’s look briefly at Museums. As a boy I always enjoyed these establishments and I think I learned a great deal from the but now the International Committee Of Museums have come up with a new definition that firstly, males little colloquial sense, but secondly would see to mean that museums are to be rigorously checked to ensure that they comply with the politically correct mores of a deluded modern generation.

Let me quote from the latest announcement from this body of eminent men and women – at least I suppose they must be eminent in their own fields, even if it appears they can only write gibberish.

Across the world ICOM provides a common framework for museums, a forum for professional discussions and a platform for questioning and celebrating heritage and collections in museums and cultural institutions. A shared definition of the museum serves as the backbone for ICOM as a global organisation.

The Executive Board selected the below as a new alternative museum definition for a vote to be included in the ICOM Statutes instead of the current museum definition at ICOM’s next Extraordinary General Assembly (EGA), which will take place on 7 September 2019, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the Kyoto International Conference Center (ICC Kyoto) in Kyoto, Japan:

Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people.

Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing.

I have spent the last four decades using words as my trade tools but despite reading and re reading that claptrap a number of times, I do not understand what it means except that it convinces me that I will never set foot in a museum again.

Will nobody in authority and academia take a stand against the arrant nonsense with which we are being spoon fed by the left wing zealots before it is too late and the world as we know it disappears up its own backside?