Of course, I do not expect any response from people like Colonel Blimp (who obviously still surreptitiously reads this blog in the same way I still surreptitiously read his - don't deny it, I know) and who blindly support absolutely anything that this shameful bunch of tossers which calls itself the Conservative Party calls governance, and the rest of us call 'protecting' the economy no matter how many lives it costs to keep the market 'healthy'.
Dominic Cummings did not tell us anything we did not already know, he just pointed out the obvious. Much nicer people than him have been saying the same things for about two years now. More disgrace.
Is it for a PhD or for an MSc course? All the PhD funding I've ever come across is personal rather than for a course. PhDs are not courses because what you do has to be individual and original. It's also unusual for doctoral funding to be withdrawn once granted. If the offer is in writing then it could be breach of contract.
ReplyDeleteI will look into it and get back.
DeleteMy young (ish) friend who teaches Art at a Midlands college has just lost college funding to take a PHD as a direct result of government cutbacks. Simple as that.
DeletePossibly a cutback to the staff development budget. However you look at this, when you consider what Britain is good at, it's not really engineering and manufacturing except for a small number of examples. Even the NHS covid test kits we were given recently were manufactured in China.
DeleteAnd why do you think that is? Anything to do with procurement budgets perchance? Anything to do with the underinvestment in British manufacture in favour of foreign investment?
DeleteProbably. We're good at the arts because people will do it for nothing, but they don't manufacture things for nothing.
DeleteOh dear... :(
ReplyDeleteThe cuts applied to the Arts also include things like Burlesque...
DeleteThe cut is not nearly so dramatic as you make it sound. Any cut is not welcomed but funding will go on as before for grants. The cut is from something like £250 to £125 additional fees over and above the grant and added on for specialist subjects. At least that was how I understood it 3 weeks ago.
ReplyDeleteFrom £250 to £125? I failed my maths o-level, but that sounds like 50% to me.
DeleteI hate Cummings more than I hate. Mosquitos
ReplyDeleteHow can you hate Mosquitos? I drank loads of them when in Cuba.
DeleteKen Livingstone drank them for breakfast thinking they were a minty fruit juice. He doesn't remember much about his meeting with Castro.
DeleteI am expecting all the usual suspects to attempt to defend this 50% cut by their political heroes, even though it goes against everything that they have spent a lot of time in FE training to be where they think they are now, as people qualified to pontificate on all things art. We have milked the system and now to hell with the young. Everything we handle on an every day basis has - at some point - been handled by an artist. Politicians are a predictably stupid bunch of short-sighted arseholes.
ReplyDeleteJust look back through history - what is the first thing t be cut by right-wing administrations riding on a popularist high? The Arts. Same old story. Read the signs and don't go to sleep again.
DeleteNow that heavy - and even light - industry has been destroyed by successive governments with a right-wing agenda, they think that I.T. and innovation in I.T. can be a lucrative replacement for it, but they don't have the will or guts to fund the innovation and convert it into production without massive, controlling foreign investment. Cummings was right about alot of things, not least that we are lions led by donkeys.
DeleteIn the US, it is always the arts that get cut when funding gets tight. Not right but this goes on everywhere. The well endowed colleges and universities are less impacted.
ReplyDeleteThat is what is so stupid about people who ought to know better. Cultures which flourish - economically and socially - take care of the Arts. The right-wing view of the Arts is that it is an indulgence which can be sacrificed without any impact on the health of the nation. Now that royal patronage has been replaced with NGOs who rely on the largesse of uneducated people who are in charge of the funding, and corporate art has become a currency, all the business see are investment opportunities. Christies and Sotherbys love it.
DeleteWhen Reagan was our president (and Thatcher your PM, to ring a bell) congress had allocated sufficient money to fund the usual arts programs; Reagan's cronies in congress simply would not release it. I taught English at a community college. Suddenly PhD's from universities around the nation were looking for jobs, their funding being gone. To continue teaching I needed to go from a Masters Degree to a PhD. But I couldn't afford it. Instead I went to work as an accountant.
ReplyDeleteAnd so it happens, over and over and over.
That is just what has happened to my young friend. They favour accountancy over the Arts, whereas they ought to be able to thrive side by side as they always have in history.
Delete“The Government proposes that the courses that are not among its strategic priorities – covering subjects in music, dance, drama and performing arts; art and design; media studies; and archaeology – are to be subject to a reduction of 50 percent.”
ReplyDeleteI only noticed this after the archaeology courses/department at Sheffield University is on the brink of closure, which went through yesterday on F/B. Archaeology always gets the cuts, but these sweeping cuts in the Arts and pushing people into being computer experts is a nonsense pushing for 'the economy' of course.
Was it Franco who said 'Every time I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun'?
DeleteThe money for all those refurbs and lucrative covid contracts has to come from somewhere. Why not from those who can’t hurt you back?
ReplyDeleteI wish I had been awarded £21 million for introducing some civil servants to a manufacturer of (poor) PPE. I like to think that I would have saved a couple of million for me and my nearest and dearest, then put the rest back into charitable arts funding, but in reality I would probably just hung on to the lot. Such is human nature in a dog eat dog economy.
DeleteBoris has just had the despot who rules Hungary round for drinks, and now refers to the UK as 'Global Britain'. He is getting pretty desperate now we have lost access to the EU economy.
ReplyDeleteWe always had trade with Hungary, it is now direct. Nothing different about the country, they are the same as before, Hungary is Hungary before or after the EU.
DeleteYes. It wasn't so embarrassing when the EU collectively dealt with him. The Australian deal sounds ominous.
DeleteAfter I've been to the dentist tomorrow I'll have a nice British steak and a bottle of Australian red, as I will next year and the year after. All this talk about the deal proves is that Brexit wars are here to stay and life will go on irrespective.
DeleteSo long as I don't have to drink Australian wine and eat Australian lamb when the Welsh ones are not being bought by the French. Our opposing seasons have worked very well with the N.Z. exchange as far as lamb goes, so why do we need to suddenly do deals with Oz when there is very little we want from them, and even less than they want from us? Global bleeding Britain. I would rather deal with Chile.
DeleteAustralian wine is too smooth and over-priced. For us it is similar to buying Japanese Scotch whiskey. Why, when the perfect stuff is right on your doorstep at half the price? What is wrong with everyone? Global Britain, that's what.
DeleteHungarian red is good, if a little on the heavy side. Think Dracula.
DeleteThere was a bit of journalese on my part.
Delete