We fully support the thrust of this article. Indeed, we've been saying much the same thing for years no, defund the arts:
Just the threat of the Tories forming a majority government was enough to start those in the arts squealing about cuts. Well, those living rich on state handouts would panic, wouldn’t they? But as a theatre critic, I have a simple plea for culture minister Ed Vaizey: stop all public funding of the arts, now!
I don’t say that because I believe the burden should be transferred to corporate sponsorship or American-style philanthropy. I say it having just come back from the Norfolk and the Norwich Festival where I sat through a show called What Will Have Been - an awful mix of contemporary circus and dance that could only exist through state funding.
The show was described as “ground-breaking,” as such shows always are, but it had much in common with every other piece of dreary, pretentious, self-consciously "arty" subsidised theatre that I have seen in 20 years of reviewing for The Stage and the former What’s On In London.
There is a difference here though in the reason why we would immediately stop all such funding. We don't think that we are capable of, nor that we should be, deciding what art others might wish to enjoy. So our argument to defund the arts does not rest on the idea that much of what is funded is dreadful, stale, boring or even simply not to our taste. Given the existence of Simon Cowell there must be people who enjoy things that we find dreadful, stale, boring or even simply not to our taste.
Given that multiplicity of tastes out there the only way we can possibly justifiy any spending on such artistic endeavours is for the people who enjoy the specific form of it to pay for that specific form of it. We'll not argue for subsidy of Dr. John if you don't argue for subsidy of whatever it is that you enjoy and we do not.
There is then one further argument, that there are some forms of art (say, ballet and opera at the highest level) which we are told simply cannot exist without subsidy. Patrons of those arts would simply never pay enough to make the spectacles viable. Which is simply another way of stating that such spectacles make us all poorer. Those who see them are not willing to pay the cost of their production. Thus the benefit gained from their existence is less than the resources put into their production. That is the same thing as stating that they are subtracting value.
And we really don't institute government to make us all poorer.
So, close down the Arts Council, abolish all tax subsidy of the arts and make the nation richer in the process.