Suzanne Moore on New Deal of the Mind

Fergus Pickering

Sorry, what are the luvvies actually going to DO? I mean beyond asking for money.

Alf Tupper

I'm creative. What do I need to do to jump on board?

Rhoda Klapp

All I see is the usual suspects. I cannot see the wasted skills, the artistic people I know cannot stop doing whatever they do, they can't be switched off. And of course in the modern world there are countless opportunities to create and publish art. It's not 1932 any more.

This seems to be more a scheme to keep the great and good occupied than to foster an explosion of art liberated from the depths of despair and deprivation.

Alf, shouldn't you be going for athletic funding? Or are you too tough to need it?

Olaf Rye

The arts are wonderful, but I do not think that there is much public sympathy for the subsidisation of artists. After all, we have had great art in every age irrespective of the economic situation. This is just an attempt by the usual suspects in the arts mafia to salvage money for their favourite leftist critics so that they can present 'art' that pleases their Marxist sensibilities whilst offending everyone else. I suspect, too, that they will take the opportunity to sneer at the public and businesses that provide the largesse for them to attend marches and cocktail parties and rant and rave about how unfair life in the twenty-first century has become. All the time, of course, not perceiving the irony of their statements as they dig their hand deeper into the pot of money made available to them by well meaning people that are the objects of their derision.

Andrew Zalotocky

Of course this is going to turn into just another opportunity for the arts lobby to hand out the begging bowl. The geeks and garden-shed inventors won't get invited for bacon butties at Number 11. They will be completely ignored while well-connected members of the arts establishment decide amongst themselves what counts as "creative" and who should get the money.

All this stuff about job creation is misleading too. A job that is "created" by government subsidy does not generate any wealth, it just consumes the wealth that has been created by other people and taken away from them by taxation. It's thinly-disguised welfare for luvvies.

David Ossitt

I suggest that you all read the article in today’s The Mail on Sunday written by Suzanne (I’m an airhead) Moore.

Where she sets out to explain and ‘show off about it’ (her own words) the first meeting at No11 Downing Street, of the loose coalition promoting the New Deal of the Mind, it is hilarious.

She lists the New Deal membership as: -

Martin Bright – Chair Former political editor of the New Statesman

Catherine Fieschi Director of British Council think-tank Counterpoint

Lorraine Gamman Professor of Design, University of the Arts London and Director, Design Against Crime Research Centre

Azeem Azhar CEO, vbrief

Richard Greer Contemporary art patron

D.D. Guttenplan London Correspondent, The Nation

Pippa Harris Neal Street Productions, film and TV producer

Suzanne Moore Columnist, Mail on Sunday

Mike Smith Managing Director, Columbia Records

Adam Thorpe Reader in Socially Responsive Design, University of the Arts and Co-founder/ Director, Vexed Design Ltd

Ben Wolff Director, Music Technology

She tells us that Alistair and Maggie Darling hosted the event, James Purnell, Andy B urnham and David Lammy were present with a token tory boy Ed Vaisey and Lynne Featherstone for the Lib Dems.

She told us that the BIG NAMES (her words) Alan Yentob, John Tusa and Jude Kelly of the South Bank Centre spoke but they also "listened"..

She wrote “This wasn’t a fluffy luvvie-gathering but about hard thinking for hard times”.

If that isn’t a fluffy luvvie- gathering could someone please explain to me what is?

Rhoda Klapp

Not quite on topic..

Just an idle query prompted by an incidental meeting with an actual young graduate today: How many companies and organisations in the "creative" sector are currently employing so-called interns, for no pay? It's exploitation tantamount to slavery. Minimum wage somehow does not apply. However I'm sure all those employers are tories, none of them are 'of the left'.

Rhoda Klapp

'Trevor Phillips committed a million'

Would that be Mr Phillips' own money? Or perhaps money which comes from the taxpayer? If the latter. does he have the authority to dispense it to anybody without string or oversight?

Is it race equality money, that is, will it come with strings in terms of whom it will be given to, or a quota to ensure equal treatment?

David Ossitt

Rhoda Klapp.

Re Trever Phillips.

Now you know and I know whose money it is; it is ours, it his not his to give.

Am I mistaken in thinking that one of his predecessors had a problem with how he spent our money too?