Agnes Samuel Porter
on the life of Bet Low
Also on this page:
Tom Winning
Free night for an archbishop
The brush-off
Dorothy-Grace Elder
How ironic that the insulting treatment of Archbishop Mario Conti by the Scottish government was exposed by the Scottish Review on the day before the Pope’s visit to Scotland.
Upfront, all government respect is shown for the Pope and a leading Catholic churchman in Scotland, Archbishop Conti. But behind the scenes deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon had the civil service compile a brush-off letter to the archbishop, which, judging by the excerpt from the draft SR printed, is an insult to his intelligence.
Completely ignored were the archbishop’s worries about the dying in the removal of funds from St Margaret’s Hospice. The deplorable tone of the proposed draft treats him as if he was a pesky nuisance; indeed that is how the 100,000 who support St Margaret’s by petition were treated.
Passing the buck once more to the health board over their decision to give funds to private medicine rather than to a highly rated charitable hospice surely contradicts Nicola Sturgeon’s own declared policies against private medicine?
Archbishop Conti had asked her simply: ‘On what grounds can the NHS justify its decision?’
Note: he asked about the NHS, which Nicola Sturgeon is supposed to control overall. He did not ask to be buck-passed to the health board.
Either she controls government policy or doesn’t.
The Scottish Review has also done valuable service in showing the chummy links between the board and the health department. Why should a reply by the health secretary to a question to her need to be shown first to the chief executive of the health board for his approval as if the health secretary was a schoolkid asking a teacher what she dare say?
This joined-at-the-hip approach has also shown in dealings with the media. Example: when, as a journalist, I asked the health board when they first informed the health secretary of cases of C-diff at Gartnavel Hospital, the reply was ‘ask the Scottish government’. And so numerous bucks are passed between the two cosy outfits, each singing from the same hymn-sheet.
In any case, grim civil service attempts at letter writing shouldn’t be necessary. Nicola Sturgeon is surely capable of writing for herself – and of intervening in certain situations. She showed her willingness to intervene personally when writing to a court asking that a twice-convicted fraudster be spared jail. But no intervention on behalf of the dying and those caring for them. No detailed personal letter.
The archbishop is being treated with less consideration than the fraudster.
Kenneth Roy
A director’s chair: but is it too boring for Creative Scotland?
From Sir Sandy and his board colleagues, there is currently the most deafening silence. Mr Dixon’s executive colleagues have very little to
say either.
What is so wrong with Manor Place, the former HQ of the Scottish Arts Council, where Creative Scotland is temporarily billeted? Could the new body not have stayed there for a year or two, made do until the economy improved and the grandiose plans for Waverlygate felt less like an offensive misuse of scarce public resources? But this is to misunderstand the nature of the beast. Until very recently there was a mistaken assumption that Creative Scotland was more or less the successor to the Scottish Arts Council. In a helpful letter to the Scottish Review last weekend, Andrew Dixon disabused us of this silly notion.
As Professor Jill Stephenson pointed out in Tuesday’s SR, the magic words missing from Mr Dixon’s letter were grants, money, support. This was no accident. In Creative Scotland’s lexicon, ‘funding’ has been dropped in favour of ‘investment’, while ‘creativity’ has replaced ‘arts’. As soon as the present boring transition year is over, arts for arts sake will vanish as a concept and ‘recoupment’ will be the new buzz-word. Quite what all this will mean is yet to be revealed, least of all on Creative Scotland’s uninformative, badly written website. But I make one prediction: the era of small grants for individual artists will soon be over.
The payroll for this revolution is likely to make interesting reading in the first annual accounts. I am told that hefty severance packages have been negotiated for Scottish Arts Council staff, while Mr Dixon’s salary is said to be £40,000 a year more than his predecessor, the last director of SAC. I have been unable to confirm this on the Scottish government’s online directory of devolved public bodies, which fails to state the salary of the chief executive. Even Sir Sandy Crombie, the chairman, who confessed at a public gathering in the summer that he was not entirely sure what the new body was all about since the board had yet to meet, picks up £30,000 a year on top of his handsome Standard Life pension.
From Sir Sandy and his board colleagues, there is currently the most deafening silence. Mr Dixon’s executive colleagues have very little to say either. They are possibly the most faceless bureaucrats in the country: you will look in vain on the organisation’s website for a dedicated page of photographs and biographies.
Yet, in the face of this empire-building, we should not expect a great deal of public opposition from the arts community to Creative Scotland’s ambitions or policies. Most people are frightened that, if they speak out, they will starve. The Scottish parapet above which heads so rarely stick is made of fear. There’s a lot of it about.
If you would like to comment on the issues surrounding SR’s recent coverage of the arts in Scotland – for publication or otherwise – please email islay@scottishreview.net
