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There is nothing special about the logo. In fact, it is ugly and ridiculous. Worst of all, looks to be copied from Amsterdam’s logo. The Karnataka minister for tourism and culture, Priyank Kharge announced that Bengaluru would become the first city in India to have a logo of its own. Already many cities across the world have logos to represent them such as Amsterdam, London, New York, and many more. This news was greeted with excitement by the people of the city. But the result has disappointed many.There is no Kannada in this logo. This is the logo of the capital city of a state whose official language is Kannada. How can you have a logo without the language of the state being used? Ideally the logo should have been in both English and Kannada or should have been formed by mixing English and Kannada. It is so disappointing to have it in English. Even in the video released on Twitter, there was only English.This exposes the double standards of the Siddaramaiah led government which had used Kannada as a political card recently. Apart from having no Kannada in the logo, the fact that it appears to be ripped off from Amsterdam’s logo is even more disappointing. Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable and what sort of an example is the government setting for its people? This is just pathetic. Notice the logo of Amsterdam.The colour coding is almost similar and it is most disappointing to see it. And even the design as such isn’t impressive either. So, all these points have totally disappointed the people of the city and there is absolutely nothing special about the logo. The only highlight of the whole exercise is that Bengaluru is the first city in India to have a logo of its own. But it is an awful logo to say the least.

Standards were definitely different then, and, you are right, this album would probably not be released today.However, that reflects a defect in today’s musical production, not a defect in Led Zeppelin IV.Rock music has always been about performance, not production. One of the reasons live albums have always been so popular is that you get all the raw energy of a single, sustained musical event, rather than the chopped about, auto-tuned, sterilised and quantised amalgam of an assembled track.People who have been brought up on computers and have been striving to ‘perfect’ their music often end up down the rabbit-hole of ‘perfection’, but their definition of perfection is ‘without flaws’. This is a poor definition for anything.Shakespeare’s writing is full of unorthodox grammar, irregularly spelled words, and even dramatic inconsistencies, for example, Hamlet’s age varies during the play and at one point he says that he has given up all form of exercise, and at another point that he has been ‘in constant practice’ as regards his sword-fencing. And yet Shakespeare is the greatest writer of English, and, possibly, the greatest writer of any language. 14-year old school students can produce poetry which is grammatically correct and correctly spelled, but is entirely without genius.Led Zeppelin IV is a work of genius. You can criticise it for taking musical ideas without crediting them, or for having any kind of mistake that you claim is present, but its greatness is the impact it has on its hearers.Every ‘mistake’ you hear in Led Zeppelin IV is really an indicator that you are operating at a musical level well below that of Led Zeppelin. That is not meant to be insulting: very few musicians could legitimately claim to be working at the Led Zeppelin IV level. But it means that surprises (a better term than ‘mistakes’) should make you ask the question: how is it that this album can have such an impact on listeners, notwithstanding this particular surprise? This, alone, may give far more insight into how true music operates.It’s my guess that within ten years, anything which sounds quantised or auto-tuned will be derided as much as the over compressed mastering of the ‘loudness wars’ of a couple of years ago. We are much more interested in a musical performance that has (as the album notes for the Woodstock album said) the marks of authenticity, like the variations in fine leather.

I believe that something approaching a third of the States in the United Nations received (or in the case of the USA, achieved) independence from Britain. Other than the USA only two States failed to subsequently join the Commonwealth, Eire, (but only because in 1922 membership required accepting the Monarch as head of State) and Burma. So I guess Myanmar probably has the best claim to have had the consistently worst relationship with Britain over the last 60 years.The absence of violence and warfare to achieve independence is also a hugely important factor in good relationships. America was the last colony to have to fight a war for it. Wars were fought, notably a little known one in Malaysia, but it was successful because the Malays knew Britain was fighting not to prolong colonial rule, but to ensure the communists did not take over at independence. By contrast, in Vietnam, the French completely confounded these objectives, using the communist threat as an excuse to retain colonial power. Indeed it is strange how in 1945 undefeated Britain accepted that all of the Empire must have independence, whereas the vanquished French, Belgians and Dutch, had far greater difficulty in accepting this and lost the friendship of many former colonies as a result, with their vain attempts to resurrect their own empires after themselves having undergone military defeat and occupation.There was a vicious little insurgency in Kenya (the Mau Mau) but here British success was ensured by the insurgents confounding demands for independence with aspirations of a Kikuyu tribal hegemony, which alienated other natives into supporting the British forces, especially since after India in 1947, it was clear that the Brits were fighting only for an orderly transition of power, and not to prolong colonial rule.There have been huge rifts based upon personal heads of State ( like Idi Amin of Uganda) and several have been expelled from the Commonwealth, but later readmitted (eg Pakistan).The fact is that the cultural centripetal force of the Anglosphere is simply enormous. I use this phrase because the non British contribution by the USA has been perhaps as significant as that of the Empire itself, not only in her vast economic and cultural dynamism, but in internationalising “Englishness” and providing an example to all subsequently independent anglophone States, that they don’t have to ditch their language culture or history in order to be considered fully “indpendent”, because America didn’t do so, and nobody doubts her independence!The other huge factor in making the Anglosphere international has of course been the melting pot approach of both the U.K. and even more so the USA, to people from all over the World. Even before America, Britain was the refuge of choice for any non Catholic oppressed group in Continental Europe. America inherited this, but developed it such that I believe only 20% of Americans claim ancestry from 17c and 18c English colonists.The term “Anglobalisation” refers to the international acceptance not only of The English language, but of the “English” form of Capitalism and political and other cultural standards.The other huge element in this ongoing international cultural assimilation that is racing away before our eyes, is the continuing technological pre eminence of the Anglosphere (the very thing which made the Empire possible). The British invented the World Wide Web, and, as with penicillin, and so much else, it is the Americans with their more liberated form of Capitalism, who ran with it. But this particular invention, the internet, has turbo charged development towards a unified global culture. The British and Americans hold between them some 500 Nobel prizes for science, (of which about 150 are British), Germany is next with about 100 then France with about 67. This merely illustrates the huge technological pre eminence of the Anglosphere.Nobody ever mentions it, but of course it is this same cultural force which is pulling the UK out of the EU. At a visceral level, the British feel that they are part of something much bigger, and much more familiar. A geographically distinct subunit of the European cultural family which has outgrown the continent from which it was born, after almost a thousand years of political and five hundred of religious independence from Europe, and having intervened to save the continent from itself ( from the French in 1815, the Germans in 1914 and again in 1939, and the Russians from 1945–1989,) sees itself not barricaded behind European controls, restrictions and regulations, but part of a wider freer, more English and more enterprising world.There is only one cultural force great enough to counter the pull of the Anglosphere, and that of course is Islam. And former colonies like Sudan, Yeman, and others, were colonised very late, and released very early (barely three generations under British rule). And it is these semi detached atavistic primitives heading backwards on the Road to nowhere, that are probably heading for the worst relations with Britain.Pakistan is different because she cannot escape the cultural impact of over two centuries of anglicisation, and even in this most Muslim of former colonies, the only route out of poverty and ignorance is through the still intact, indeed thriving and expanding, British education system. Even in the tribal heartlands of the NW frontier with Afghanistan, the old Anglican Schools are packed, over 90%, with the children of aspirational muslim families. And even though their Parents may not speak English, their children emerge more thoroughly anglicised than were any of the children of the Raj.Probably because they have chosen to be “English” and not had it forced upon them. This is why most former colonies are more anglicised now than when they were part of the Empire, because they have stepped out into the World, and found that it is an “English” world. Indonesians, Chinese Japanese Vietnamese Russians and Germans (none of them ever part of the Empire) all want to speak and trade and learn in the language these former British colonies have inherited from their old colonial ruler. All just incredibly convenient. This, along with the American example of being free and independent but still “English” has banished any stigma of continuing to use the language of the former oppressor.Indeed in India, with 14 major languages, Hindi feels more like an oppressive language than English, which is politically and culturally neutral, now that there are no Brits in the country. And Modi needs to be be very careful in his attacks upon the use of English in the home, because it was the banning of English as an official language in Sri Lanka which triggered the demands of the Tamil minority for independence from the Sinhalese majority.English is essential both for Indians (and Nigerians,and a dozen others) to be able to speak to each other on neutral ground, as well as to be able to speak to the rest of the World.And of course the adoption of English by independent former colonies of non British European powers (Portuguese French, Dutch,German and Italian and Belgian) is also a way of giving a cultural “slap in the face” to less liked former imperial masters. Indeed there have recently been applications to join the commonwealth from States that were never part of the British Empire (I think Mozambique is now a full member).But if there is one idea I would like to convey above all other, it is the primacy the language we speak for the thoughts that we have.Language is not simply a culturally neutral vehicle for communication. If there isn’t a word for something in a language, there may not be a thought for it.Language is charged with cultural assumptions such that learning to speak in English necessarily involves learning to “think in English”, and this has a colossal impact upon the thoughts that people have, not only because the words themselves, and even the grammar, are culturally value laden, but because the access it gives to English philosophical, political social and literary works, all packed with revolutionary ideas, especially to those from a non European cultural background.Non Europeans will know what I mean by this, how English is grammatically an incredibly egalitarian language relative to the more hierarchical social structure enshrined especially in many Asiatic languages. I know Japanese English teachers in the past at least, found conducting English language classes to be highly erosive of the sense of deference between teacher and pupil simply using the same personal pronouns as the teacher as well as the same verbs, is simply not possible to do in Japanese without the pupil appearing incredibly disrespectful. (For European readers to get a feel of this, just think it is true even between English and French, where there is no “vous” versus “tu” between teacher and pupil). Multiply this effect by twenty, and you get a feel of what a social and cultural time bomb is the English language for many Oriental and other cultures.Of course sharing a language and a culture does not guarantee good political relations all the time, as all the wars in South America have shown, but, over time, it is generally the best predictor of political harmony.