| With the Arts world in Scotland left reeling this week when the
Scottish Executive failed to come up with the squillions of dosh demanded, the minister
responsible admitted to the JT that she’d given up reading the initial report. The
said report, from the agreeably Stalinist-sounding Culture Commission ran to a million
pages and came up with 125 "action points", or a ginormous "wish list"
as others might have it. |
Minister for Culture Patricia Ferguson confessed to the JT that she
battled through the first chapter but found the text so boring that she fell asleep. "Works of fiction need to engage from the first page. Sadly the
authors of the report failed to apply this basic principle so I just nodded off."
The sleepy-headed Minister, on awakening, discovered that
she was still expected to pronounce on the weighty tome’s findings and come up with a
response. |
"I had a quick look at the
last page where the arts world were asking for 100 million of your earth pounds and I
thought, fuck it, they can have 20 million and that’ll dae them." Significantly,
the Executive will, in future, deal direct with the cash demands of Scottish Opera and
Ballet - which basically means some hapless civil servant will have to listen attentively
when representatives of these said posh arts companies throw a hissy fit and scream until
they’re sick. |
