Politics – Page 26 – Hannah Nicklin

Image shared on Flickr via a CC licence by Russell Higgs

Edit: I also recorded a slightly abridged version of this blog (with pretty moving pictures) which you can listen to on Youtube, click here.

This is just a quick blog post, I’m not sure what difference, if any, it’s going to make, but I have to say this, if at the very least to have somewhere to point people so I don’t have to keep on repeating myself. Warning: may contain anger.

The Tories are going to break our economy. They’re going to dismantle all that is admirable about our state in the false name of saving money.

The Tories, aided by the centre right Lib Dems, are going to tear the heart out of our country. Because they have never needed one, because they can’t conceive (for the most part) what it’s like to be anything but supremely privileged.

And they’re going to do so whilst skipping along to the tune they have a lazy, complicit, right wing media parroting ad nauseum; ‘this is Labour’s fault’ ‘in the current climate’…

Since when was applying market values to education and health provision ever a good idea? How is that working out for the US? We need expertise, and we need efficient, competent services. Market capitalism brings us to bust, or it provides us with a service at the lowest cost. How much is your health, how much are your children worth?

When did we all forget that this was a global financial crisis? Or did I hear wrong, did it not hit the US (well known for their incredibly profligate education and health provision) just as badly as us, and everyone else? When did we forget that it was Cameron and Osborne’s pals the de-regulated (hello Thatcher) bankers that got us here? When did we forget that the NHS was founded in the largest period of national debt our country has ever known?

Fallacy number 1:

‘This is down to years of Labour’s Profligacy’

Did you know that public spending (as a % of national income) in 1999-2000 was the lowest since 1957-58?

Source (PDF)

There was pretty much a similar degree of fluctuation over Labour’s terms in power as have been going on since 1950, notably with a large injection of cash following 2007 in order to stop the bottom falling out of our little capitalist world. So, y’know, probably forgivable.

And you know what? I am happy for public spending to rise.

“Estimates from the Office for National Statistics suggest that public services have improved considerably over the period from 1997 to 2007 with measured outputs suggesting a one- third increase in the quantity and quality of public services” Source (PDF)

Continue reading Don’t Let Them Get Away With It

Image shared via a creative commons license on flickr by VampzX_23

“According to UNESCO the UK is the world’s largest exporter of cultural goods. Now there’s something. When have we been the world’s largest exporter of anything recently? And this is achieved with a tax payer investment which is 0.1 percent of the recent HBOS bailout. Not only that, with this tax payer investment we generate more economic activity than tourism, and we do this without a bonus culture, and without a ‘talent drain’. Now is the time for banks to have artists on their boards so they can understand how to use public money properly.”

Talking Birds are an awesome company, for more reasons than the above statement. I think every theatre, arts and culture company should have this on their website. Talking Birds did so just after the credit crunch hit.

Lots of blog posts are flying around at the moment about funding. Arts companies, used to the abuses of Tory rule, are battening down the hatches and readying their defences. Then, today came that expected announcement:

“Conservative MP Jeremy Hunt has been appointed as Culture Secretary – and he has already signalled that the arts are in line for up to £66 million worth of cuts as part of the drive to reduce the national debt.” (Source)

As DanRebellato Retweeted “So much for Vaizey’s ‘the Arts are safe with us'”.

This is a foolish move in the extreme. The Arts are largely seen as an easy cut, not necessary, and granted health and education sound much more important… if you believe the arts aren’t a part of either. However the truth is worse than that, the truth is that this action is at best, gesture politics, and at worst, extremely damaging to the economy. As Marcus Romer points out here

“Arts funding spend [only] amounts to 7pence out of every £100.00 of public spending”

The actual amount of public spending accounted for by the arts is minuscule. And then there’s the money it brings in. Following a recent question to Ben Bradshaw (the previous Secretary of State for Culture) Alexander Kelly of Third Angel found that:

“Last year, at London theatres alone, VAT on tickets generated £75m in income. Arts Council England invests just over £100m in theatre.

One way of reading this would be to say that the government doesn’t subsidise theatre, theatre more than pays for itself out of VAT alone”

It doesn’t just pay for itself, it brings money in, especially with the VAT hike that’s largely expected.

“The DCMS also point out the wider, and better known, arguments for seeing subsidy of the arts as investment that produces a massive return.

“However the economic impact of theatre and the subsidised arts is much greater than just VAT. The creative industries, including a number of subsidised sectors, account for 6.2% of the UK’s Gross Value Added (GVA), £16.6bn in exports, and 2m jobs.” (source)

All this on an investment of 0.1% of what we gave to HBOS during the banking crisis, for an amount that wouldn’t even register on this infogram of UK money

Continue reading Gesture Politics and the Arts