Museums should feel free to charge admission....

Photograph by Drawsome.

We can't have museums selling off our cultural heritage to make ends meet – charging entry is a far better solution.

Britain's museums are in crisis. On the surface, things looks good. Our galleries have benefited from years of expansion. But all over Britain, a darker reality is emerging in the wake of spending cuts. A survey has shown that since the spending review 58% of museums have suffered cuts, and a fifth have been hit by devastating cuts of 25%.

On that measure, yes, 42% have not yet suffered cuts – but surely it's a policy of divide and rule, with councils, not central government, making the big decisions, and less fashionable venues taking the biggest hits (at least as far as I can see). But an overall climate of contraction will surely hit all museums and all aspects of what they do. And there is little chance of this improving in the near future.

The worst option is for museums and public collections to start selling works to pay the bills. The recent sale of a Millais by one cash-strapped council is a terrible mistake, a betrayal of our cultural heritage.

The best option, I am starting to think, may be to introduce admission fees. I spat out this notion earlier this week in the wake of the attack on two paintings recently in the National Gallery.

 The debate was taken up by the Telegraph. Obviously, attacks on art happen at museums that charge an entry fee as well as at free ones. But this is about much more than security.

I remember the drab, uncared-for feeling of some of Britain's biggest museums in the 1980s and 90s. They seemed to be eking out their time, with no big plans and no sense of splendour.

 Free museums with a supportive government are very different from free museums in a climate of austerity. Going to the Louvre or to American museums 20 years ago was like entering a different universe of cultural pride and enjoyment – these museums really wanted to thrill, and they did justice to their collections.

So do ours – right now. Britons have realised how precious our great collections are. The world shares the passion, and if you visit the British Museum this summer the sheer crowd numbers startle. How about turning that popularity into money? We can't let recent progress in our galleries and museums be destroyed by a cost-cutting mentality that first freezes, then rolls back, everything that has been achieved.

Charging for entry cannot be a taboo. I probably make more use of free entry than most people; there are obviously ways to make entrance fees egalitarian. Free entry for everyone under 20 and all students, membership schemes for the rest of us, something like the new National Art Pass for those who want to purchase annual overall access.

I think free museums are a great British tradition, but I don't want these museums to decay. Charging for entry is a better remedy than selling paintings, closing galleries or sacking staff. Might it even give visitors a keener sense of the value of some of the greatest experiences it is possible to have?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/jul/21/museums-charging-admission-entry-fees

Marriage confers 'little benefit' to children's development....

Institute for Fiscal studies research suggests parents' educational qualifications more influential on child development than marriage.

Marriage confers "little if any benefit" in terms of a child's development, according to new research, challenging the rationale behind the prime minister's desire to offer tax breaks to couples who tie the knot.

New research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found "little or no evidence" that marriage itself has any effect on children's "social or cognitive" development. Before the election the Tories had made the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family a key plank of their "broken Britain" analysis.

David Willetts, the Conservative thinker on families and now higher education minister, argued that marriage in Britain was in danger of becoming an exclusive middle-class institution – and action was needed bolster it.

The idea is still floated by key Tories, such as work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, but is opposed by Lib Dems.

The work by the IFS accepts that those who marry tend to be relatively better educated and relatively better off. But the institute points out: "differences in outcomes between children whose parents are married and those who cohabit may simply reflect these differences in other characteristics rather than be caused by marriage."

By examining data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a sample of children born in the UK in the early 2000s, the institute shows that children born out of wedlock are behind in cognitive development at three, five and seven-years-old but this is because "cohabiting parents tend to have lower educational qualifications than married parents". The same pattern is observed with "socio-emotional" development.

The thinktank said it had also repeated its work using another dataset to account for the idea that "getting married could itself lead to changes in some of the things we want to control for, like relationship quality, income and education". The results were the same.

Ellen Greaves, research economist at the IFS, and one of the authors of the report, said: "It is true that children born to married couples are on average more cognitively and emotionally successful than children born to cohabiting couples. But careful analysis shows that this largely reflects the differences between the types of people who decide to get married and those who don't."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/19/ifs-marriage-little-benefit-child-development

Rupert Murdoch attacked: Wife Wendi growled at custard pie thrower in rage....

FOR more than two hours he dozed in the seat next to me, looking bored by the drama unfolding in front of him.

From time to time I glanced at the blank expression of the shabby 20-something staring without interest at the Murdochs and wondered why he’d bothered to turn up.

When five protesters stood up in the wood-panelled Wilson Room and silently unfurled their posters, he barely even looked.

And as the rest of the room sat rapt at the testimony, he registered not a flicker of interest.

ACTION
Then, as the questioning finally started to draw to a close, he tensed ready for action.

In one movement, the scruffy man leapt over my handbag and was heading towards the Murdochs.

It made me jump with fright. I tried to shout, but my mouth was dry. I tried to grab the blue bag he held, but my body wouldn’t move.

And then he was just two feet from the 80-year-old newspaper tycoon, pulling a paper plate covered in shaving foam out of the bag.

Totally silent, the stocky, unshaven man – who we later learned was comedian Jonnie Marbles – pushed the “custard pie” into Murdoch’s face, knocking off his spectacles.


Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/07/20/rupert-murdoch-attacked-wife-wendi-growled-at-custard-pie-thrower-in-rage-as-she-hit-him-115875-23283019/#ixzz1SgvRlVtJ
Go Camping for 95p! Vouchers collectable in the Daily and Sunday Mirror until 11th August . Click here for more information

Angela Merkel dashes hopes of lasting settlement on Eurozone debt.......

Banks could be slapped with a levy of €10bn (£8.8bn) over three years to raise €30bn for another Greece bailout.

Angela Merkel has quashed hopes of a lasting solution for Greece at Thursday's crucial summit of European leaders, even as the International Monetary Fund warned of the repercussions for global economic growth if the eurozone's debt crisis was not tackled quickly.

Amid suggestions that banks could be slapped with a levy of €10bn (£8.8bn) over three years to raise €30bn for another Greece bailout, the German chancellor insisted that there would not be a "spectacular event", such as a restructuring of Greece's debt. "Further steps will be necessary and not just one spectacular event which solves everything," Merkel said.

Economists warned that indecision after tomorrow's summit could cause severe tension in the markets.

Gabriel Stein, at Lombard Street Research, said: "Ministers must come up with some solution that does not involve postponing once again the difficult positions that alone can solve the fiscal crisis. Otherwise the next eruption of the crisis won't be in the autumn, it is more likely to be next week. Moreover, each failure to act raises the threshold for what must be done next time."

Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, described Thursday's meeting as the "last chance for eurozone policymakers to get a grip on the region's debt crisis".

"Anything other than a very decisive response, which could be applied not just to Greece but also to Spain and Italy, could see the situation become irretrievable," said Loynes.

In an assessment of eurozone policies, the IMF also piled on the pressure on European leaders to act to solve the crisis and pump more money into its banks.

"It would be very costly not just for the eurozone but for the global economy to delay tackling the sovereign crisis," the IMF's Luc Everaert said.

The fund argued that the European Financial Stability Facility, set up last year to bail out troubled eurozone countries, should be increased and buy up bonds in an attempt to restore confidence in the financial markets.

But for now some European Union leaders remain in disagreement with the European Central Bank, which has been arguing that a default by Greece would mean it could no longer provide funds to domestic banks. Leaders such as Merkel believe that the private sector needs to take losses on its holdings of bonds to help shoulder the burden of rescuing Greece.

However, there was confusion in the markets on Tuesday when Ewald Nowotny, head of Austria's central bank, appeared to suggest that Greece could default on its debt without causing a crisis for its banking sector. But he later issued a statement insisting that he shared the view of the ECB that a default was unpalatable. The ECB helps to fund the European banking sector in return for sovereign bonds, but will not do so if the country has defaulted on its debt.

The confusion about the stance of the ECB towards Greece pushed yields on two-year Greece bonds through 40% as speculation mounted that a default was more likely.

With the FTSE 100 rising 37 points to 5,789, stocks recovered some of the losses after Monday's rout in financial stocks – when three top UK banks lost £5bn of their value – while yields on Italian and Spanish bonds slipped back from their record levels. Even so, Spain was forced to pay 3.912% on an 18-month bond, the highest price since 2002 and considerably more than the 3.26% since the last sale of similar bonds.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/19/european-debt-crisis-greece-summit

Phone hacking: Murdochs and Brooks set to face MPs' questions.....

Rupert Murdoch, son James and Rebekah Brooks face three hours of questions over phone hacking at News International.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, his son James Murdoch, and Rebekah Brooks, until a week ago the three most powerful figures in British media, will on Tuesday face an unprecedented three hours of questions over the extent to which they knew, approved or subsequently covered up widespread phone hacking at News International.

Their confrontation with the culture select committee potentially represents the most severe test of parliamentary authority since the select committee system was established in 1979. It also represents an unprecedented opportunity to cross-examine the normally unchallengeable 80-year-old Rupert Murdoch.

James Murdoch, his chairmanship of BSkyB already in question, will face a make-or-break examination of his professional reputation in which he will have to explain why he authorised payments to cover up illegal phone hacking by the News of the World.

He will also have to answer charges, laid by then Metropolitan police assistant commissioner, John Yates, as recently as last week, that the company refused to co-operate properly with the police between 2006 and 2010.

James Murdoch has admitted that he authorised out-of-court payments to silence the Professional Footballers Association chairman, Gordon Taylor, over the way in which his phone was hacked. He has said he regrets the payments, and was not in full possession of the facts when he authorised them.

It is likely that Rupert Murdoch will offer further apologies for the way in which the families of murder victims had their phones hacked. But he has adopted an erratic stance in the past week, at one point telling the Wall Street Journal that News Corp has handled the crisis "extremely well in every way possible," making just "minor mistakes".

Murdoch said the damage to the company is "nothing that will not be recovered. We have a reputation of great good works in this country." Asked if he was aggravated by the negative headlines in recent days, he said he was "just getting annoyed. I'll get over it. I'm tired."

In another sign of the uncertainty over tone within the company, the Wall Street Journal – owned by News Corporation – ran an editorial on Monday condemning the Guardian for its journalism.

But at the weekend, his British company bought adverts in newspapers to express its abject regrets at what had happened.

News Corp shares have continued to fall in the US and Australia. Murdoch has already been forced to pull out of a complete takeover of BSkyB, and one government minister, Alistair Burt, has claimed he may not be a fit and proper person to hold a broadcasting licence.

The Murdochs will be eager to isolate the crisis as a British media problem common to many tabloids, rather than an international problem specific to the culture he generates in his newspapers.

Brooks's lawyers have confirmed she will attend the select committee hearing, even though she was arrested for 12 hours on Sunday. Her solicitor, Stephen Parkinson, said she was not guilty of any criminal offence.
Parkinson angrily attacked the police for Brooks's arrest, saying she had suffered "enormous reputational damage. They put no allegations to her and showed no documents to her linking her to any crime. In time, the police will have to give their account of their actions, in particular their decision to arrest her with the enormous reputational damage this has involved."

Parkinson added: "She remains willing to attend and to answer questions. It is a matter for parliament to decide what issues to put to her and whether her appointment should take place at a later date."

She will be cross-examined separately from the Murdochs, but the questioning may fall apart if her lawyers insist she cannot answer potentially self-incriminating questions. Brooks has appointed David Wilson, chairman of the public relations agency Bell Pottinger, to act as her spokesman.

Meeting at the same time as the culture select committee, the home affairs select committee will separately grill both Sir Paul Stephenson, the outgoing Met police commissioner, and Yates, the officer responsible for deciding in the space of eight hours that the Guardian in July 2009 had published no new evidence about the scale of phone hacking.

Yates has subsequently admitted at a meeting of the home affairs select committee last week that he made an error in failing to reopen the inquiry, but blamed a lack of co-operation by News International.
Both men are now subject to referral to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for the way in which they handled the phone-hacking inquiry.

Yates will be questioned over why he failed to tell either the culture select committee or the home affairs select committee that the former deputy editor of the News of the World Neil Wallis had been employed by the Met as a strategic communications consultant. He had been cross-examined in detail in writing and orally by the MPs Tom Watson and Jim Sheridan over his relationship with Wallis, but did not mention the contract.

Watson denies Murdoch will meet his nemesis , saying the session is unlikely to match its advance billing.
"There is not going to be a killer blow on Tuesday. Expectations are way too high," he told the Guardian. "We will get the symbolism of parliament holding these people to account for the first time.
 We will look for facts, and not just offer rhetoric. This story has been like slicing a cucumber, you just get a little bit closer to the truth each time."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/18/phone-hacking-murdochs-brooks-mps

Rebekah Brooks's arrest came as a surprise despite fortnight of bad press...

Rebekah Brooks: arrest was a surprise after she met officers at a London police station on Sunday.

Rebekah Brooks did not know she was going to become the 10th person arrested in the phone-hacking investigation when her resignation as News International's chief executive was announced on Friday.

It is understood that the appointment to be interviewed by police was not in her diary until Friday evening, hours after she left the company after 22 years.

It was not until she met officers at a London police station that she learned she was being arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and on suspicion of corruption.

"It was quite a surprise," her spokesman said.

Minutes after Brooks was taken into custody at midday, David Wilson, the chairman of the public relations agency Bell Pottinger, had been asked by her lawyers to handle press inquiries.

"Over the coming weeks she will continue to press her innocence," said Wilson, who was on the PR team aiding Madeleine McCann's parents during the first weeks after her abduction. "She intends to clear her name."

It was unclear on Sunday night whether Brooks will give evidence as planned to MPs on the culture, media and sport's select committee. Members were taking legal advice. James and Rupert Murdoch are scheduled to attend.

Wilson said Brooks had been "offering since January to assist in any way that she could, and only last week the police were saying she wasn't on their radar".

He added: "Her resignation and her agreement to attend the select committee hearing on Tuesday seem to have prompted a change of tack."

Brooks – who had resigned after huge pressure, with calls from across the political spectrum for her to go – is beginning to assemble a crack team of advisers. Her legal representative is Stephen Parkinson of Kingsley Napley solicitors, whose website describes him as frequently representing "high-profile individuals caught up in criminal or regulatory investigations".

Parkinson advised Tony Blair and his cabinet on the Hutton inquiry, and Sir Ian Blair and other officers during investigations arising out of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in Stockwell.

Wilson and his colleagues at the agency founded by Lord Tim Bell, Margaret Thatcher's favourite spin doctor, are veteran crisis management experts, having handled everything from Eurostar trains stuck in tunnels to allegations of information theft in Formula 1.

Brooks was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, and on suspicion of corruption, according to a statement from the Metropolitan police. She was interviewed with regard to both Operation Weeting, which is looking into phone hacking, and Operation Elveden, which is looking at allegations of payments to police officers.

The last two weeks have seen Brooks, the former News International chief executive, transformed from the Murdoch empire's closest link to Britain's political elite to an outsider facing criminal charges and fighting to salvage her reputation.

On Saturday 2 July, she was a guest at an all-night party hosted by PR boss Matthew Freud and his wife, Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, at their Cotswolds mansion, Burford Priory. The event was nothing less than a gathering of the country's political and media masters.

The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, and his star reporter Robert Peston rubbed shoulders with Peter Mandelson, Labour leader Ed Miliband's brother, David, and the education secretary, Michael Gove.
According to reports, Brooks was not as gregarious as usual, spending much of the evening locked in conversation with her boss, James Murdoch, and other News International executives.

The following Monday, the Guardian broke the news that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's voicemail messages had not only allegedly been hacked, but that they may have been deleted to make room for new messages, giving her parents the false hope that she was still alive.

On Thursday 7 July, the decision was taken to close the News of the World.

Announcing his decision, James Murdoch stood by his key lieutenant, saying: "Fundamentally, I am satisfied that Rebekah, her leadership in this business and her standard of ethics and her standard of conduct throughout her career are very good."

When Rupert Murdoch flew in to London last week to take charge of the crisis, one of his first acts was to signal his full support for Brooks by taking her to dinner in Mayfair. Asked what his priority was, he replied, indicating Brooks: "This one."

Calls for her resignation swiftly followed – from Dowler's parents, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and Ed Miliband. By Friday morning, following further revelations and the withdrawal of News Corp's bid for its satellite TV subsidiary Sky, had fallen on her sword.

Brooks, 43, got her first job in Fleet Street while still a teenager, joining Eddie Shah's short-lived tabloid, the Post, as features secretary. After the Post closed she arrived at the News of the World's magazine, where she was quickly promoted by the then editor, Piers Morgan.

By the age of 29, she was deputy editor of the Sun. At 32, she became the youngest national newspaper editor in the company when Rupert Murdoch gave her the top job at the News of the World. Three years later she was editing the Sun.

During her six years at the helm of the paper, she made her name exposing Angus Deayton and Prince Harry's drug taking, and initiated the notorious campaign for "Sarah's law", naming and shaming sex offenders in the wake of the murder of another schoolgirl, Sarah Payne.

Her one previous arrest, in 2005, was under very different circumstances. She was picked up by police after allegedly assaulting her then husband, the EastEnders actor Ross Kemp. The TV hardman sustained a cut to the mouth but no charges were brought.

Back then, Brooks was editor of the Sun. Rupert Murdoch is said to have sent a designer suit to the police station so she would look her best when she left the cells.

 With typical bravado, she went straight to the office. After uttering the words: "Much happening today?" she took control of the news conference and ordered a carefully worded frontpage story on the incident. While the team of advisers Brooks has assembled will help to fight her corner, she can no longer command a national newspaper to back her.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/17/rebekah-brooks-arrest-surprise

Liverpool was right about News International all along.........

My song, Never Buy the Sun, pays tribute to the scousers who started their own boycott after the Hillsborough stadium disaster.

Billy Bragg

Wednesday 13 July 2011 12.14 BST

Link to this audio

For the past 22 years, people in Liverpool have boycotted the Sun newspaper because of the lies that it printed about the behaviour of Liverpool FC fans at the Hillsborough disaster.

 Ninety-six people were crushed to death at a football match at Hillsborough in Sheffield on 15 April 1989. The Sun ran a front page story that accused Liverpool supporters of variously robbing and urinating on the dead bodies of the victims as they were laid along the touchline.

The reports were totally unfounded. Since then, many people in Liverpool have refused to buy the Sun on principle.

As I listened to the unfolding reports of the phone-hacking story last week, it occurred to me that the scousers had been right about News International all along.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/13/billy-bragg-never-buy-the-sun