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How did you manage to write an article on this subject and completely fail to mention the Arts Council?

For those of you who actually read Will's blog and aren't already aware, I'll do his job for him. The Arts Council has been asked to find an extra £5m on top of the 3% cut - £19m in total.

The Stage is reporting that ACE says its total admin budget is £23m so cuts will have to be passed on to the organisation's ACE funds - the sector then. However, the DCMS will let them spend some of their reserves to meet the cut. So that's ok then.

No need to thank me Will.

Dear Will,

Your article isn't really about art, its about money. But don't worry, I don't have a problem with that. After all, no money, no art.

You have to be so proud that our democratic system has delivered. It hasn't always worked so well. Universal sufferage could quite easily have led to the tyranny of the majority over the minorities but for the fact that Labour always bankrupted the counrty are were duely removed.

We now have a government that governs and dosen't simply play Robin Hood and turn a blind eye to staggering debt. Art, education, state pensions, the NHS etc are now protected.

It would have been better protected if we had all noticed that we had been running up debt at £30-40b per year since 2001 and had built up a national debt of £600b before the financial crisis hit and grew it to £776b by the time of the budget in April 2010. (I am pointing out that the debt problem didn't suddenly decend upon us in 2007 but that most of the debt was already in-place but none of us were vigilant.)

We now have management of our money in-place. You have to be grateful for the cuts. We all know that we cannot go on spending £700b per year when we had to borrow £156b last year and £165b this year. Artists might not be renowned for logical thought but I know that they are not all on the street because or arithmetic failure to not budget for their rent. They can budget as well as an engineer.

We have the equivalent of a 60 year mortgage that, even with the new management, will grow to 80 years in four years time. The 2009/10 Tate budget will be paid for in part by our decendants who will not be born for 50 years.

The arts budget is now smaller, and will get even smaller, but it is now safe. We can now guarantee that their will be an arts budget tomorrow.

The guarantee comes from two elements of the new management. (1) We have learnt the lessons of coalition governments falling apart and this time we have a written contract with a five year term. (2) We have an independent Office of Budgetary Responsibility that future-proofs us against spend, spend, spend and its bankrupt consequences.

I hope that you now feel better about the cuts.

I'm guessing that there are tens of thousands of pieces of art throughout the UK etc that the general public very rarely see on display simply owing to logistics. So I'm also guessing that the odd coupla of thousand that could be better used to pay off some of the national debt! There are a great many extremely rich individuals with the odd billion to spare! So lets have an auction! Just like some other poverished third world country I fear good ole' UK simply finds itself in that same bracket! Just as the real wealth bearing fruit of manufacturing of this nation has been allowed to fitter away then so to should elitist elements of the Arts and similar poor ROI, which are largely designed for the few and not the many!

This column is not so much about Art with a capital A as it is about popular culture - like most of the media, the emphasis is on books and films. I have never come across Will writing about contemporary classical music, - maybe I missed it. Composers who strive in this world have already been hit incredibly hard by the recession, and the funding bodies have not had the expected return on their money, and so have cut back on funding commissions. It would be nice if the media supported classical music that was being written now, not in the 18th century! Composers are living people, trying to make a living like everyone else, but always at the bottom of the pile and completely ignored by all but a few music writers. Will's column is pretending to be artistic, but is of a Saturday magazine level. This is a truly terrible time for composers, probably the worst they have ever lived through in this country. We have accepted that this is the music centre of the classical music world for years, but this can be taken away from us - in fact, I think we are just simply giving it away.