The Observer details a new scheme to subsidize the purchase of contemporary art.

Before launching Own Art
in November, the Arts Council lent £1m in pilot purchase schemes for
original contemporary art, mainly in the North East. It now hopes to
lend between £5-6m.

Of course, these sums are trivial in the overall scheme of things but still, makes one think a little eh? The spending is to subsidize the interest on approved art purchases. Yes, only that work approved by the Arts Council qualifies, then if you purchase it you can do so with a 10 month interest free loan, the Arts Council picking up the interest. So the 7 million being spent will generate modern art (assuming that all sales are new a silly assumption. Much of it will be sales that would have happened anyway but now get subsidized as well) sales of about 70 million….that should secure Nu Labour’s support amongst the luvvies eh? As if they needed it.

On the other hand that 7 million could be used to run an infantry battalion for a year. Or left to fructify in the pockets of the populace. But that wouldn’t help such public luminaries as Tracy Emin or Damien Hirst now would it? Heaven forfend.