Since the announcement of the Comprehensive Spending Review, one of the key concerns for arts organisations has been not the headline Arts Council cuts, but the wider cuts to local authority funding. Many organisations - both companies and professional venues in the UK - are supported by council funding - for companies, it's a valuable second ( Read more... )

A petition for school sports partnerships, supported by the National Union Teachers, received a boost after David Cameron said during prime minister’s questions yesterday that “concern at local level” had led to a possible rethink ( Read more... )

I had a dream in which the coalition government had cut Thursdays, so now every Thursday was only half its previous length.

I woke up and thought that was quite a plausible piece of policymaking.

My father writes from Chile:

Im now in Ushaia, using a Spanish keyboard that doesnt recognise apostrophes. Your Ma has gone off to look at penguins, but I elected to see the hotspots of this town - there are none.

Excellente.

My awesome boyfriend, being a super-fly super-important IT journalist of note, gets invited to all manner of IT industry shindigs. There, in exchange for boring him a bit with presentations about, I dunno, some new kind of flatscreen or something, the IT companies show their respect and love for him by giving him laptop bags. Quite good laptop bags ( Read more... )

LJ invites me to "report a bot". I can report several.

Hippolytus says

Sure the words must be spoken
'seriously'
and so as to be taken seriously?
This is,
though vague,
true enough in general -
it is an important commonplace
in discussing the purport
of any utterance whatsoever.

I must not be joking,
for example,
nor writing a poem.
But

[for JLA]

Dear Michel Foucault ( Read more... )

"Cats are the undisputed creatures of comfort. That's why we released 100 of them into IKEA Wembley, and watched to see what happened."

http://t.ikea.co.uk/8ZA-90OJ-D2YR6T672/cr.aspx

Here's a trope that wears a little thinner every time I read it: "When I was growing up in Warrington/Salford/Wishaw, I was actually really into Bowie/T-Rex/60s pop like The Shangri-Las. But you'd never say that growing up because round our way, in Warrington/Salford/Wishaw, liking Bowie/T-Rex/60s pop like The Shangri-Las was liable to get you ( Read more... )