I had a very depressing conversation the other day after enjoying the excellent Saad Qureshi exhibition at the Djanogly Gallery at the University of Nottingham. There is a better than even chance that within the next 6 months or even less that this will be only major gallery left in Nottingham as all the others will have been closed due to the city of Nottingham council running out of money. Now I am sure that there have been any number of bad and costly decisions made by the council over the past 14 years that might have contributed to this lack of cash. However, I am equally sure that the cost of these decisions is only a small percentage of the cash that has been striped from the council due to the austerity measures taken by central government over the same time.

Now I have travelled all across England over the last few years and there is one thing that hits you again and again. The place is falling to bits and this is, in part, because the local council has no money. I only mention this because we are about to go through the depressing charade of the Conservative government cutting a few pennies off of tax or national insurance whilst knowing that the country cannot afford the cuts. Is the country a better place now than it was in 2012? I think not and the evidence is all around…and don’t get me started on Liz Truss!