Do You Feel Medicine Is an Art Disguised as a Science or a Science Disguised as an Art?

T he arts are existence screwed over. Again. If nosotros keep assuasive this to happen, there will exist an atrophying of the national soul the like of which the UK has never seen. The added insult is that this latest round of cultural vandalism is being wreaked under the guise of a bogus battle between the arts on ane side and science, medicine and technology on the other.

A consultation by the instruction secretary, Gavin Williamson, and the Office for Students (which distributes funding) proposes nigh halving a stream of higher education funding (£36m to £19m), pregnant universities will lose millions for subjects such equally music, drama, dance and art and design, as well as media studies and archaeology.

The Department for Education says the cuts relate to additional funding and volition only affect some subjects. Information technology says that arts subjects aren't "strategic priorities" and that reforms volition benefit "scientific/medical subjects", targeting "taxpayers' money towards the subjects which support the skills this country needs to build back better… those that back up the NHS, high-cost Stem subjects". In other words, the government is trying to turn this into a cultural cage fight, of (valid, crucial) scientists, computer students, nurses and the like versus (cocky-indulgent, feckless, elitist) drama students, artists and archaeologists. Not just that, a cage fight without end; Williamson said that he would "potentially seek further reductions" to funding such courses in future years.

Understandably, at that place's uproar from the artistic community, with Pulp's Jarvis Cocker saying that the proposed cuts made art educational activity seem "expendable" and unimportant, when it isn't. Certainly, information technology's confusing to see 1 of this nation's greatest assets – its powerful international cultural entreatment (music alone generates billions) – chopped off at the ankles. Correct now (after Brexit and the pandemic), the arts scene cannot sustain such major blows, especially when they by and large affect disadvantaged students. For years, there'south been a systemic erosion of working-form participation in the arts and this represents another large chunk off a crumbling cliff. Then there are the consumers. These kinds of cuts might first affect those involved in the arts, but ultimately they make everyone'southward lives culturally poorer.

The government knows this and that's why it's emotively and cynically dragging the NHS into it. That's why split vocations/skill sets such as acting and medicine are being pitted against each other equally an either/or deal. Perhaps in that location are scientists who feel engaged in a funding grudge match confronting dancers, just equally in that location may be sculptors who experience in competition with nurses, but I doubt it.

It seems clear that arts subjects are beingness placed in false competition with these other valuable areas in order to reframe an outrage as practicality and necessity. In truth, the arts accept always stood alone and should ever stand solitary. When it comes to the arts versus medicine, science or calculating, it's not a question of what practise yous choose or fifty-fifty how practice y'all cull. Rather, it's: why are we being asked to do and then?

Why 'boozy lockdown United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland' is no laughing affair

The pubs were closed just booze could be bought cheaply and in bulk in supermakets. Photograph: David Kilpatrick / Alamy/Alamy

Drinking to tackle the tedium and isolation of lockdown wasn't a joke for some. The Office for National Statistics reports that deaths directly related to alcohol rose to a twenty-year high in England and Wales during the pandemic, up 20% in 2020 from 2019. The death rate started to rise during the first lockdown and increased each quarter. Of 7,423 deaths in 2020, people succumbed to liver disease and mental and behavioural disorders caused by alcohol or accidental alcohol poisoning.

So there's the socio-economic element: men were more probable to die generally, but especially disadvantaged men, who were four times more probable to die than those from affluent areas. Also, disadvantaged women were three times more probable to die than those from wealthy areas. The deaths are thought mainly to exist of higher-risk drinkers already consuming large amounts of alcohol. Some people returned to drinking in lockdown later managing to give upwards.

You don't accept to be a card-carrying party-pooper to discover this grim reading. Of course pubs and confined were mainly closed, merely alcohol could still be bought cheaply and in bulk at supermarkets and online. While some people gave upwards alcohol during the pandemic, the stress could have made others drink far more than and far more ofttimes.

Practise charities and help groups have a point when they despair about the easy availability of cheap, high-strength booze? Should greater efforts take been made to warn people to monitor their intake, instead of treating "boozy lockdown Britain" equally a bit of a joke? Experts call the ONS figures a "wake-up telephone call" for the government, and entreatment for habit services to be given the resource to tackle what is a growing problem. Maybe it volition only be once the pandemic stabilises, and we all stumble into the lite, that we'll truly be able to see what state nosotros're in.

Sorry, Ipswich Town, but the rest of us are at peak Sheeran

Ed Sheeran watches his squad play Sheffield United. Photograph: Rob Howarth/Getty Images

What has football game done to deserve Ed Sheeran? Not content with dominating music with his "signature" (banal-cadre?) audio, Sheeran has moved into sport, signing a deal to sponsor the shirts of the men's and women'southward teams of Ipswich Town, the League One guild he has always supported.

Positives. The shirts volition non exist emblazoned with his proper name but with symbols from his album titles and the give-and-take "TOUR". At that place's not enough space on the shirts for Sheeran to humblebrag about his friendships with the likes of Taylor Swift. Ipswich Town are presumably delighted and grateful to accept the deal. Nor is Sheeran the showtime musician to become involved with his favourite football gild – from Elton John and Watford FC to the Libertines and Margate FC, the pop-football bond is real.

Yet, back off, Sheeran. You're already everywhere in popular culture. After Earth is obliterated by nuclear Armageddon, footage volition be found of Sheeran with James Corden performing Carpool Karaoke and scientists of the future will determine that, on this bear witness, humanity had information technology coming to them.

Sheeran also bought upwardly half the village, including a pub, in his abode place, Framlingham, Suffolk. Now he's on the local football game strips. Where will information technology stop? All the best to Ipswich Town, only the "Ed-creep" is strong here.

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/08/how-creative-of-the-tories-to-invent-a-culture-war-to-disguise-arts-cuts

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