Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s declaration that 2011 would be ‘the year of corporate giving’ to the arts was never likely to be fulfilled, given how tough it is to stay in business these days. Trying to shift the onus on to companies to replace cuts in state arts funding was an obvious political manoeuvre, but it comes as no surprise that the total of corporate giving (according to the Arts & Business consultancy) is down 20 per cent from its 2007 peak, to £134 million. That compares with a record £382 million from individuals — a healthy 6 per cent up on 2010 after two years of decline. If there’s a surprise in these figures, it is that 30 per cent of FTSE 100 companies still support the arts at all. As for major donors, most are international banks and another is BP: corporate sinners hoping to redeem their public profiles.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for sponsorship of the arts from every available source and have spent a good part of the past 20 years trying to raise it. But shareholders are right to expect a return — in terms of image-building that makes potential customers feel warmer towards their products — on money given to the arts that might have been spent on machine tools. Long gone are the days of bosses’ boxes at the opera as a standard perk and competitive status symbol. But those same bosses and shareholders as individuals have a duty of philanthropy which is an integral part of the capitalist deal: by all means reap the rewards of risk and responsibility, but share them around. You don’t have to be rich-listed to ask yourself how much you could give away without affecting your lifestyle or jeopardising your family obligations. The answer might be quite a lot.
Of course corporate sponsorship is to be welcomed, even from big oil and bad banks — and not sneered at as it is by the left-leaning arts establishment. But it will always fluctuate with profit cycles and guilty consciences. As state subsidy shrinks, the only path to sustainability for the arts is an embedded culture of individual giving. The business of business is business, so let’s stop trying to pass the buck.
The wind is dropping
Even as the oil price spikes above $120 a barrel, it’s good to see British common sense prevailing in the matter of investment in wind energy. What the Guardian calls a ‘Tory backlash’ — a letter to the prime minister from 100 backbenchers calling for onshore wind-farm subsidies to be slashed, because the technology is so inefficient and the giant turbines are so hated — has prompted players in the wind industry such as GE Energy and Vestas to put new UK projects on hold or ‘under review’. Wind champions such as former energy secretary Chris Huhne must be particularly irritated to learn that Yorkshire folk who live in the shadow of the Drax coal-fired power station are much more annoyed by the arrival of a nearby line of wind turbines. Public opinion is well ahead of policy-makers on this one, and soon we’ll be selling job lots of second-hand turbines to somewhere much windier.
Hatchet job
Professor Sir Mervyn King is known for his bookishness, and it’s easy to picture him ensconced in his weekend library enjoying Forrest Capie’s formidable 900-page history of the Bank of England from the 1950s to 1979. But he will have drawn little pleasure from his advance copy of The Bank by Dan Conaghan, published this week and covering post-1997 with particular focus on the Governor’s helmsmanship during the crisis that began with the collapse of Northern Rock. Indeed, if Sir Mervyn has a cat, he probably threw The Bank at it shortly after reaching page seven, on which he is accused of upsetting his staff by swiping the Christmas tree from the entrance hall to have it installed in his own office.
Conaghan’s narrative is relentlessly critical of King’s unbending management style and intellectual obstinacy, echoing Alistair Darling’s Back from the Brink on the latter point. It also questions his judgment at key dramatic moments, including his decision to spend a day at the Oval Test match in August 2007 while the rest of the world’s central bankers were teleconferencing each other and throwing liquidity at buckling markets. Those who admire King’s rigour and decency, and who believe no governor should ever have to contend with a Downing Street regime as hostile and incompetent as Gordon Brown’s, may feel The Bank is a bit of a hatchet job. Governors do not customarily publish memoirs, but after this assault I imagine Sir Mervyn must be contemplating a riposte at least as weighty as Capie’s magnum opus.
More candidates needed
He will be able to pursue that project in earnest when he retires in June next year. Dan Conaghan helpfully lists the runners to replace him. King himself is thought to favour his economist deputy and monetary disciple Charlie Bean, whose profile so far has been almost invisibly low. Bank insiders prefer the other deputy governor, Paul Tucker (‘The only real central banker we’ve got,’ one of them told me), a Threadneedle Street lifer and smooth operator who really wants the job but has fallen out with King. Meanwhile, Westminster punters like the look of banker-turned-Treasury minister Lord Sassoon; Adair Turner of the FSA has ‘an ego the size of St Paul’s Cathedral’ but is too clever to be ruled out; and a fancied outsider is ex-Barclays chief John Varley, who has the gravitas, the tailoring and the City’s respect but not — I suspect, knowing him quite well — the ambition.
Like the Republican party, we need new candidates to liven up this race. If it has to be a serious economist, but also someone who has confronted real-world challenges, how about Greek-born Vicky Pryce, formerly Mrs Huhne, as the first female Governor? Or if what’s wanted after the tensions of the King era is a motivator with the media on his side and a lighter touch on monetary detail, bring on Harry Redknapp.
Comments