"Stage stars blast 'madness' of cuts in arts funding at Evening Standard Theatre Awards"

Some pearls of wisdom from yesterday's Evening Standard (MBVNIF):

[Stephen] Fry said: “Whatever your politics, you can’t believe that art has to take a stand in the marketplace like potatoes or knives and forks or any other industrial thing.”

And

Accepting an award honouring his Olympics team, Boyle said “a true legacy of the opening ceremony” would be for the arts to be recognised in the EBacc. He added: “For a modern economy that doesn’t make cars any more, we’ve got to understand where our growth comes from. Our success is in culture. Anything that gets in the way of that should be fought against.”

Ahem.

I also get the general impression that most tourists who come to London for "the culture" want to go and see musicals, that most derided of low brow art forms which receives absolutely nothing in the way of subsidies and pays full whack VAT, PAYE, Business Rates and so on. And which are, by and large, enormously successful and profitable.

I doubt whether any tourists come to London especially to see UK taxpayer-funded films. For sure, public museums get subsidies as well and entrance is free, but it's not as if museum staff are routinely paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, that money actually goes on exhibitions and displays.