National Busking Day is an insult to real buskers

This Saturday is National Busking Day, a series of events across the country proving that Britain’s arts establishment just don’t get it. The whole point of busking is that it’s free-spirited, independent, individualistic – exactly the sort of enterprise that doesn’t need or want a national day. ‘Let’s take something that lots of people do spontaneously, without any wish to be organised,’ goes the thinking, ‘and then organise it.’

First prize for Not Getting It goes to Gareth Powell of London Underground. ‘Busking on the Underground network,’ he says, ‘has been a rite of passage for London musicians for generations.’ Yes, Gareth – one that they pursued in spite of the Tube trying to stop them. When I moved to London in the early 1990s my Fender Stratocaster and Peavey Solo amp were regularly packed up at the request of Tube staff, though they almost always added (as they did to other buskers) that if it was up to them they’d have let me carry on.