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BILLY BRAGG – NEVER BUY THE SUN from Billy Bragg on Vimeo.

A small lull in a hectic day’s shooting at one of my long-time client the Fashion Retail Academy today. For a college course, they managed to pack in some serious names. Sir Philip Green (Arcadia Group) and Mark Bolland (Marks & Spencer, not T. Rex) above, joined shortly afterwards by Tess Daley.

When I was doing A-levels, we had a visit from Lenny Henry. Which, whilst nice in its own way, wasn’t quite the same.

Bolland: that guy is suave. People audibly swooned.*

*I must get an M&S suit…

From 0Dont0Blink via How To Be A Retronaut

Some of those old Preston Bus Station pics of mine keep getting requested by various people from Jonathan Glancey of the Guardian and general architeccy fame through to the latest blog to run them: Dutch architecture blog TheArchHive.

The UK’s reputation as a global centre of art and culture is beyond doubt. Until now.

Like most areas of our society, the Arts has been affected by funding cuts. But what exactly are the real effects of these cuts? From an economist’s point-of-view they make little sense. Because every pound of funding lost to the Arts means two pounds lost to the Treasury.*

Lost Arts is a three year project which will catalogue all the projects, events, initiatives, performances and organisations that will be lost to us. We will provide running totals of jobs at risk, money lost to the Arts and money lost to the Treasury.

Our aim is to show what we are losing forever on a day by day basis.

Lost Arts will be launched at 1pm on Wednesday 15th June in the Lecture Hall of Westminster Central Hall. Please join us.

*Alan Davey-Chief Executive, Arts Council.

http://www.lost-arts.org

Did a shoot yesterday for the Radio Times, in Strangeways. (Or HMP Manchester, which doesn’t quite have the same ring). Assisted by Richard Manning. Fascinating day. Can’t show the pictures yet, until the magazine is out.

This one though was not required for publication though; the Governor. Thoroughly nice chap.

I’ll do a bit of a fuller blog post on the day once the photos are out of their embargo, but as it stands – well – it’s a bank holiday and the sun is out.

Auntie Beeb called and asked me to take some photos on my birthday for the new series of Two Pints. Couple of new characters in the new series (Georgia Henshaw & Freddie Hogan), both of whom were delightful to work with. Some pics below fyi.

A *COLD* two days in January. Brr-rr.

Craig Marchington assisting.

Another photo of mine used in the Basics Interior Design series “Exhibition Design” by Pam Locker. Published by AVA Publishing. How jolly. (Props to Redman Design for providing the exhibition design that I photographed…).

Over & out.

Neglected to mention that in September, the International Slavery Museum (@SlaveryMuseum), Richard Benjamin and David Fleming published “Transatlantic Slavery; An Introduction” by Liverpool University Press. Foreword by Reverend Jesse Jackson (@RevJJackson).

It features my photo on the front cover, and several more inside. Was pleased to be a part of the promotion of the International Slavery Museum, critically situated in Liverpool’s Albert Dock and featuring some incredibly important and powerful displays by Redman Design.

Like everything else, available on Amazon.

I wanted to lend my support to the students protesting in London at the proposed Higher Education funding cuts. As a lecturer, as well as just a member of society, I think it is morally reprehensible that the government should be withdrawing almost entirely from its responsibility to fund a whole section of the public sector. Instead choosing to transfer the responsibility for that funding almost entirely on to the individual. People who lecture more than my one day a week have today argued the very same toss in their letter to The Guardian today.

Government has been shown to buckle before under protest, and here is a cause on they should be pushed to. I hope the protest continues until it does, and would hope all of my current and former students to throw their full weight behind it.

The stance the government is taking contrasts almost entirely with the situation in all other advanced nations ¹. By contrast, they are investing in both their future economic growth as well as the future knowledge base of their societies by funding Higher Education. Our government is proposing to withdraw entirely from those subjects with no ‘practical’ utility. That is: the Humanities, the Social Sciences and the Arts ²; History, Literature, Languages, Economics, Politics, Art…. Funding will be ring-fenced only for engineering and applied sciences, law and professional vocational courses in business administration. In other words, favouring only corporate industry, not students, universities or society.

The case for this is being made, as with many other retractions within the public sector, on the basis of The Deficit. The line that the government’s Press Office is trolling out on a daily basis until it is no longer questioned in the public consciousness. To throw a little perspective on the matter, here is the graph of the UK’s national debt over the past 100 years:

Not insignificant, but worth comparing with the hysteria currently being peddled. In addition, here are the interest payments on the national debt as a percentage of GDP, over the past 100 years:

Although we have been ‘softened’ with the mantra that these cuts are necessary, if we really were slashing public investment in the future knowledge base of our society on the basis of a correcting a short-term imbalance in the country’s books, then that would be shocking. In reality, this is part of an ideological decision. I’m all for ideology. One should have the conviction to proudly state your ideology and convictions, and not try and claim you are being forced into your decision.

The arguments being put forward over the Higher Education spending cuts, disadvantaging the poor and crippling all but the most ‘practical’ subjects is an argument that appeals to those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I hope the students succeed in getting this point across, as loudly as they can.

I should point out the views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of the institution I lecture at…