No Rock And Roll Fun

LISTEN TO YOUR FATHER: Got a problem? No-one else can help you? Ray Davies CBE busy elsewhere? Then why not launch a Task Force. The usual Labour solution to tricky situations - creating a pointless cross-agency partnership body - has been wheeled out to "help" the live music scene (something that wasn't having very much in the way of problems until that new law came in insisting that any place which wanted to put on any live music would have to have an extra licence). The body - led by Fergal Sharkey, from the recently disbanded Radio Authority - will have "a range of experience and expertise to help us [...] identify the barriers to live music being played and find out why some areas thrive while others do not." explained Estelle Morris, the government minister who felt unable to cope with a "proper" department like education but who gamely battles on with the apparently less tricky Culture, Media and Sport portfolio. So, it's not just a bunch of well-fed toffs driving round the country in a bus popping into pubs, then.