It's not often we get to include a news story about the Prime Minister on this website - he usually spends his time chasing hoodies and illegal immigrants off council estates, and that's not really our thing - so we thought we'd mark the occasion in our blog, too. Tony Blair gave a speech at the tate Modern yesterday: in fact, the speech has been described as the longest period of time a British Prime Minister has spent talking about the arts for decades.
The Tories and the Lib Dems have been complaining for a while about funding for the arts being cut. The Tories say that £200m a year has been lost for the arts and heritage. It is true that Arts Council funding has been frozen, and we all know that Lottery money is being diverted toward the Olympics. But overall you'd have to say this Government has helped our cultural industries a great deal, including with money.
The speech, of course, was full of platitudes, and little in the way of firm commitments or strategy, but then he is on his way out. I sincerely hope I have the opportunity to write a similar post to this one in the early days of Gordon Brown's premiership.
LW
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