If you want more on the context of arts funding, you will do no better than read William Skidelsky’s post, Britain’s New Renaissance in First Drafts and then read Mary Wakefield in Coffee House on what should go on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. To which I would only add that having seen the new designs (and what is there at the moment) it is less a new Renaissance and more straight back into the Dark Ages.
Mad and bad
So said Samuel West at the Equity meeting yesterday, attacking Arts Council England’s proposals to cut funding to the arts; and Peter Hewitt, chief executive of ACE is reported this morning as feeling that he had been ambushed by the vote. His reaction, and the management blather he speaks, perhaps point up the real problem: indifferent leadership and a signal failure of imagination. Better is the more considered view of Sir John Tusa, on Radio 4’s Today Programme, “This is a painful transition, probably not a very well-managed transition, but I suspect it actually has to take place”.
A Dismal Science
See Paul Hodkinson in Legal Week this morning. The LSE has “included law in its annual list of non-preferred subjects for undergraduates”. He reckons that this risks having the legal community up in arms. I doubt it. Those of us who have the misfortune to practice law already know that his assertion that law is a ‘dismal science’ is all too true.
More Dr Gordon
I have always wondered how I might avoid involuntary involvement in a photo-opportunity if I had the double misfortune to be involved in some newsworthy incident and then visited by a politician not of my choice. In his Notebook in the FT today, John Willman gave me the answer. He was commenting on Gordon Brown’s visit to the Royal Marsden (“all too redolent of Margaret Thatcher’s predeliction for visiting the victims of the disasters that seemed to afflict Britain with great regularity in the 1980s – again with silent spouse in tow”). Apparently, he goes on, “when Mrs Thatcher made a habit of touring the wards, witty leftwingers had little cards printed saying that in the event of an accident or disaster, they did not wish to be visited by the Iron Lady”. Something to tuck into the wallet, along with the Donor Card (and possibly add as a note to my ICE number on the mobile).
The novel life is not enough
An interesting snippet in a report in Legal Week that the newly appointed head of Appleby’s global structured finance department, Jeanne Bartlett, had left private practice with DLA Piper in 2006 “to write a novel”. Clearly she has either completed the novel; or the lure of institutional work (or perhaps just the money) proved too great.
Enough said: George Wilkinson's blog 