Grrr

Spit-Lit is one of the few literary festivals I've been invited to speak at, and I'm therefore rather fond of it. It was set up to celebrate women's writing and happens at Spitalfields (which is, um, somewhere in London) every spring.

But this morning I received a letter. Here are some extracts:

"Before we had even applied to the Arts Council for our annual grant to produce Spit-Lit we were informed that they would be unable to maintain our existing level of funding because of the DCMS cuts from Lottery funding being redirected to meet the growing Olympics bill.

...

The arts and culture sector lost £152 million this year through Lottery funding going to the Olympics. The Government have just announced that Arts Council England funding will now receive an extra £50m, but not until 2010-11."

The festival has been cancelled indefinitely as a result.

Bastards.

And while I'm on my high horse, I'd like to mention Karen Reissmann. She's an old friend of mine, but also a very capable psychiatric nurse with decades of experience and an admirably active and effective campaigning trade unionist. Working as she does for a Primary Care Trust (Manchester) and being at the sharp end of all the worst effects of PFIs and all the other nonsense this government has inflicted on our health service, she has a lot to campaign against. And she's been sacked. For pointing out how rubbish the PCT are and therefore "bringing them into disrepute," which apparently counts as gross misconduct.

So, carrying out her duties as a trade unionist, protecting her members and alerting the public to the worst incompetencies of the local health service is a sackable offence.

I could go on, but that other 'alf of mine explains the whole thing so much more eloquently, over on Comment is Free (where he's becoming a bit of a regular, and I'm that proud).