Arts cuts

The story is all over the press, and I have to tell you that our betters are fit to burst that taxpayer funding to the Arts Council has been cut. According to the Guardian’s Dame Liz Forgan (Ms, or rather Dm Forgan is both head of the Guardian’s governing trust and head of the Arts Council and thus the place to go for these truths) they have been as fair as possible with the cuts but less money in means less money out.

So much, so good, that these luvvies are being asked to live in the real world. But what is arts funding all about?

Is it for the people? Without a doubt the bulk of the people would go for Andrew Lloyd Webber on the highbrow side and East Enders on the ..er.. less highbrow. But it’s not about what they want, you see, it’s about what they ought to have.

So what ought they to have? The market can easily decide what they want (Andrew Lloyd Webber makes lots of money). So they want let’s say, Confessions of a Window Cleaner but ought to be reading Martin Amis (not much better in my opinion). But who decides what they ought to have?

Yes, it’s the great and the good. A panel of ‘people who know’ decide what is good for us. They are, of course, arty types and have friends in the arty world who get the reluctant taxpayer’s money.

Really, if you put on a play that is so awful that no one goes to see it, you deserve to go bust in the same way as someone who makes a food product – kimchi ice cream, for example – that no one wants to buy. Most of these things are London-centric so someone in Cornwall is paying their share without being able to see the production due to the cost of rail travel and hotel accommodation.

The idea that funding should go to the opera – and a large amount does - is simply a case of the poor subsidising the rich.

If there have to be cuts – and there have to be – the Arts Council is exactly the place to start applying them. Let’s start with the people at the top.