Film Subsidies- Finally Giving The Children Of A-List Actors The Chance To Appear In Movies

As has been explained before the massive funding given to the UK Film Council was never intended to promote good art or good investments but merely to buy the support of greedy luvvies:

Stephen Frears recalls meeting him soon after [Gordon Brown] had announced a big increase in money for films. "Do you know what you've done?'' the movie man asked. "Created a rush of absolutely terrible British films?'' the benefactor replied, laughing.

So it's no surprise to learn that most of the films funded by the Quango failed to return their investment. Even spectacularly successful films like The Queen didn't repay the money that they had borrowed.

Still the supporters of continued subsidies have a new argument to make:

"Not all of the ones that have been released have started to recoup," explained the BFI spokesman. "The rationale for investing in films is not necessarily on the cultural strength of them. A large part of it is for developing new talent.
"Donkey Punch was invested in under the Warp X new talent initiative – it's new talent, a new director, and one of its cast, Jaime Winstone, has gone on to do new things, and to make a name for herself."

I don't begrudge Jaime Winstone a successful career but as her surname suggests she is the daughter of Ray Winstone, so she was not some undiscovered talent who would never have an opportunity to make a name for herself in film without a half a million pound subsidy for a crappy British film like Donkey Punch.

In A Pickle

"Let's Pickle a few more costly commissions"

I don't think that the Telegraph's leader writers understand what pickling does. Yes there is a minister called Pickles so naturally they want to make a pun on his name but pickling is a method of preserving something in it's current state for a long period of time, in other words by asking to pickle costly commissions the Telegraph is asking that we keep them going in perpetuity.

Yes I do realise that this is probably the most tedious and trivial post that I have ever written.

Localism & Postcode Lotteries.

Tory spokesman Grant Shapps has been criticised for denouncing the 'postcode lottery' of IVF treatment because he also advocates "localism" of which "Postcode lotteries" are an inherent part.

However localism is about devolving power down to elected local bodies not to unelected quangoes. Whilst I dislike the cliche "postcode lottery", there is every reason to be aggrieved when one receives an inferior service than people living in a different area because of the decisions of unelected appointees- like the people who sit on health boards.

Shapps is therfore quite right to highlight the wildly uneven level of service being delivered in different places.

Auditing The Auditors.

The news that the Audit Commission, of all bodies, might £10 million in Icelandic banks is pretty droll. It was already known that many councils have millions in Icelandic banks, which begs the question:

how supposedly cash strapped government institutions, local authorities and quangoes have millions of pounds that they were keen to stuff into wobbly Icelandic banks in the first place.

I have no answer to that or to the other big question, given that Iceland's economy is primarily based on fish, how exactly did they think that their banks had the kind of security to guarantee large deposits?