The introduction of television and video technology have had a profound impact on popular music and the music industry. This chapter looks at the relationship between popular music and television and charts the development of rock and pop on both British and American television from the 1950s onwards. In Britain, television emerged from within the BBC and its public service monopoly of radio broadcasting, and was subject to policies and cultural attitudes which had prevailed within that context. Like Hollywood, American television's response to rock'n'roll and to the evident growth of the teenage market was often clothed in the discourse of controversy which characterized debate about young people and their lifestyle. The growing convergence between the record industry and television, the place of television in youth culture and the power of televisual images to determine the meanings of popular music, are examined through consideration of a number of specific programmes.

The conclusion draws together the overall themes of the book, looking at individual experiences of inequality, the problem of shared experiences that obscure structural inequalities, and the long-term and long-standing nature of inequalities.The conclusion defends the book’s project of making inequalities visible in order to tailor appropriate solutions. Making inequality visible suggests the need to develop appropriate theories of inequality and culture. The book concludes by thinking through what strong and weak theories of culture and inequality might look like, and what solutions they might suggest to the problems we have made visible in our analysis.Ultimately the conclusion restates the value of culture, and the need to challenge inequality so that everyone can experience the way that culture is good for you.

The aim of this chapter is to set the debate about the future of the British House of Lords in the wider context of a discussion about the principle and practice of bicameralism around the world. The American Senate is today the example par excellence of a powerful second chamber. It is a model that has been followed elsewhere in terms of its structure, but it remains unique. Two myths about second chambers must be dispelled. One is to say that they are on the way out, that there is a trend towards unicameralism in the modern world. The second myth is that where they do exist second chambers are becoming weaker and ever more marginal bodies. There has been a tendency simply to look at second chambers as if they are appendages to first chambers. Second chambers can add depth to representation within parliament.

This chapter focuses on the role of France and Germany in the EU. Both states have often exercised dominance at key moments and have collaborated to drive the integration project forward. Converging Europe has been a story about how these two national giants determined the extent to which their core interests could be reconciled with advancing the European project. Konrad Adenauer had never been an enthusiastic German in the political sense even before the disastrous advent of Hitler. From Charles de Gaulle to Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, French strategy towards the European Union was too often based exclusively on ways of extracting national advantage from Europe or else promoting the personal agenda of a head of state enjoying semi-regal powers. The blows directed against the cause of building an EU with strong economic and political authority by France were harder ones than those mounted by any Eurosceptics.

By looking at the historical development of the relationship between popular music and moving image culture, this book aims to examine some important developments in the ways in which popular music has been mediated commercially, ideologically and aesthetically through the screen media throughout the twentieth century. It undertakes specific analysis of individual texts, examines their ideological determinants and effects, and emphasises the importance of economics – of business and commerce – in both their production and consumption. The book points to the crucial importance of technology in shaping and determining film, television and music video as both commodity and cultural form, and examines the pleasures which audiences have experienced. It examines the suggestion that what most characterizes the relationship between popular music and the screen media from Hollywood musical to music video is a strong sense of continuity.

Drawing on oral histories with men and women who grew up in Sheffield across the post-war period this chapter explores the relationship between consumption, leisure, and identity. Moving away from the study of ‘spectacular’ youth it demonstrates the importance of placing young people’s experience of leisure and consumption within their lived and local environment.