The emasculation of Punk Rock in contemporary Britain is reflected the 2012 Olympic soundtrack, with The Clash's London Calling used by sponsors British Airways and The Sex Pistol's lyric "God save the Queen" (from their song Jubilee) finding its way into the opening ceremony's popular music medley.
In modern Russia, on the other hand, Punk seems to be alive and kicking. I refer, of course, to the girl band Pussy Riot who broke into Moscow's main cathedral earlier in the year wearing coloured balaclavas and called for the Holy Mother to save Russia from then prime minister, and now president, Vladimir Putin in a barrage of obscenities. Unsurprisingly, these actions led to unseemly scuffles with Orthodox nuns and clergy, and the subsequent imprisonment of some band members on charges of blasphemy and other offences. The absence of bail and the prospect of a long prison sentence for these young and, it has to be said, rather demure-looking women has outraged many Russians, leading to street protests by their supporters and one artist stitching his lips together. International media support for their plight is also growing.
However, I wonder what the reaction of Britain's liberal democracy, and, indeed that of the world's media, would be if a group of inappropriately-clad young women were to break into a mosque and engage in behaviour like that of Pussy Riot. The young women might well need to be imprisoned for their own protection.
For this reason, I would suggest, Britain is undergoing its own cultural emasculation, in some ways reflected in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. The insidious nature of this process, by contrast with the, arguably, fascist regime of President Putin should be cause for equal concern.
However, the lyrics which perhaps best encapsulate our country's contemporary cultural malaise, expressed most profoundly in the cult of celebrity and the lingering legacy of The Spice Girls, due to perform in the London 2012 closing ceremony, are still those of The Sex Pistol's original Punk song Pretty Vacant:
"There's no point in asking us you'll get no reply
I just steam in but I don't decide
I got no reason it's all too much
you'll always find us
Out to lunch !
We're so pretty oh so pretty
vacant
We're so pretty oh so pretty
vacant"
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