Gordon Brown policies which have fostered a State workforce of 1 in 4 workers.

by

Simon Heffer

[Daily Telegraph- February 13-2008]

In a Stalinist Green Paper shortly to be published by the Government, Gordon Brown is to propose an initiative that he might represent as the extension of

CULTURE in SOCIETY

but which in reality will be a wicked attempt to have the

STATE

INTERFER

IN EVERY ASPECT OF OUR ARTISTIC LIFE.

TOPPING THE LIST

and this notion perhaps makes the point better than anything - is the bogus

"right"

for children to have

Five hours culture a week.

[Herr] Goering didn't say:

"Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver:  it was the 1930s playwright Hanns Johst, who said:

" Wenn Ich Kultur hore entsichere ich meinen Browning."

(when I hear of culture, I take the safety catch of my Browning.)

Perhaps the five-hour "cultural offer" could begin by explaining that to children, and also the effects of such an idea today.

I am with Goering/Johst on this one precisely because what Mr Brown and his  half-educated boorish acolytes define as culture is almost certainly not how  I , or most of you would deploy the term.

The list goes on: a new college of digital media.

"Creative apprenticeships"

more cash for

"avant-garde films"

(i.e., films that don't go straight to DVD, but  straight to oblivion)

something called

"regional creative economy strategy frameworks"

and (and here a contradiction in terms if ever you sought one) a new enterprise fund for creative industries.

GOD HELP US

I knew one day something might come along to persuade me to start thinking about voting for Dave Cameron, and this could be it.

The outrage this provokes is so extensive, so profound, so sulphurous that it is hard for any right-thinking person to know

WHERE TO START.

But let us have  one more dollop of screaming, catatonic rage before we try.

The other day the Government told

ENGLISH HERITAGE

that it could not have more than £2.1 million next year towards the upkeep of our CATHEDRALS (which , incidentally, is a third of the amount spent since 2003 on the pointless inquest into the drunken driving of Diana, princess of Wales, or one fiftieth of that spent on the equally

Bloody Sunday Inquiry.

Yet the Green Paper proposes a mere £200 million for something called a national film centre.

WHY STOP THERE.

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I can understand why Mr Brown is doing this. First, it is part of his autistic (and I use the word in the Greek sense, as  you children will shortly be learning in your five hours [Brainwashing] a week) approach to politics that he must

CONTROL EVERYTHING-EVEN THE ARTS.

Second, the very people whose cocaine-fringed snouts will now plunge into this vast, taxpayer filled trough -

FAILED WRITERS

FAILED COMPOSERS

 FAILED ACTORS

FAILED PAINTERS

FAILED "PERFORMANCE ARTISTS",  all of whom feel they have as much entitlement to a

WELFARE STATE

as the

SEVERELY DISABLED

THE ELDERLY

WIDOW and ORPHANS

-are those who flocked to Labour before 1997, but have deserted it since.  Mr Brown sees how successful the

CLIENT STATE

(which accounts for a quarter of the workforce)

[ 1in 4]

has been keeping his party in power.:

SO WHY NOT EXPAND IT?

Leftists justify public spending of the arts as a means for it to shrug off

"Elitism".

Many of our finest artistic treasures are free: you don't even have to pay the admission fee to a

CATHDRAL

which in some cases is in any event voluntary, to stand outside and gawp for half an hour at the wonder of its being.  The fee to go in is often less than a packet of cigarettes.  Radio 3 comes with your television licence.  The State already ensures that many museums and art galleries are free.

WHAT A NONSENSE THIS MAKES

of the

 " five-hour cultural offer"

for our children, and how it

PATRONISES THEM.

If parents wish their children to be more cultured, there is much they can do about it for little or no outlay, if only they

HAVE THE WILL OR THE IMAGINATION

THEY CAN :  SWITCH ON THE WIRELESS

THEY CAN:  TAKE THEM TO A LIBRARY

THEY CAN:   TAKE THEM TO A GALLERY OR A MUSEUM.

If they can't be bothered

TO DO THIS

-and I can see watching football on television of a weekend. accompanied by six packs of lager and cancer sticks, may be a superior priority -then their schools should do it for them.

WHY DOES THIS REQUIRE THE STATE TO ORDER THESE FIVE HOURS?

Who will make the judgments as to what is, or is not, culture?

If it is to be supplied by the very people whose lack of talent, whose superfluity of self-indulgence, whose charlatanry is about to make them the main beneficiaries of Mr Brown's incontinence with our money, then

GOD HELP OUR CHILDREN,TOO

[More to follow]

Last few paragraphs:

Our culture is cloacol [down-right rubbish!] to day not because it is under-funded, but because the people creating it are funded to be

SELF -INDULGENT.

They are trained not to meet the demands of a thoughtful audience, but to meet only the demands of themselves and their coterie of

STATE PATRONS.

Is it not against some STATE funding for the ARTS, but I am against it being flushed down a lavatory of

CORRUPT

DEMEANING

IGNORANT AND

 POLITICALLY INSPIRED DRIVEL.

I am particularly against its being handed out to people who manifestly have no appreciation of

QUALITY or EXCELLENCE

and who are happy with cathedrals to fall while rubbish is larded with cash. Mr Brown's plans are a disgrace

PRACTICALLY and IDEOLOGICALLY

MY SAFETY CATCH REMAINS OFF.

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[We came across the following article on culture from  from a  Philip Gibbs in 1903 which though short in content it had a  simple message to convey:

Our practical friend is wrong when he says

"Hang your culture!"

We do want culture very badly.  It is the thing we want most in life, and worth more than the invention of the steam-engine of wireless telegraphy.  The object of mankind should be - the aspiration of all wise, reforming man is - to raise the standard of the race, to bring men a little nearer to angels, a little further from brutes.   Then let us get culture.  let us develop each side of our nature broadly, equably, not producing a race of specialists each with some moral or mental bump abnormally developed, nor handing down to the next generation characteristics that will produce such a state of things as foreshadowed in Mr H. G. Wells's Anticipations.   The cultured man is educated all round, his nature well-poised, melodious and whole.   his soul is receptive of all the refining influences of life, responsive always to beauty of thought and form , colour and sound.   The baser promptings of his being have been crushed under heel by a wisdom learnt from intercourse with the intellectuals of many an age and nation.   He is a considerate man because he can look at questions from many points of view, a kindly man because books have taught him sympathy for many sorts of character," a clubbable man" (as Doctor Johnson phrased it) because he has in his brain a store of pleasant and profitable knowledge which he gives out when wanted for the benefit of others.

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[Font Altered-Bolding & Underlining Used-Comments in Brackets]

MARCH-2008

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