Capital of Culture update: Number one in some sort of poll

The Liverpool Echo is delighted that Liverpool has been voted number one in an Arts Council poll designed to find out which city the Beatles came from ("find the most musical city in Britain").

10,000 people - not all from Liverpool - took part in the online poll which is in no way undermined from a credibility point of view by Leicester ("home of Kasabian, Showaddywaddy and Engelbert Humperdinck") coming in fourth place.

-What you protesting against? -What you got tickets for?

The art of protest song writing isn't as dead as occasional think pieces in the papers would suggest (these usually assume that back in the 60s you couldn't switch on the TV without seeing Phil Ochs turning up for Top of the Pops), but its nice that the Arts Council is doing something about it.

We're not sure the right thing to do, though, is a competition to encourage protest music with tickets for, and a slot at, Glastonbury as the prize. Because if your motivation to protest is to go to a festival for free, what sort of song are you going to wind up with?

Cause it's 1, 2, 3, 4
What are we fighting for?
Don't know, and I don't give a darn
Next stop is Worthy Farm...

Art for heart's sake

Ana Matronic, out of the Scissor Sisters, is currently popping up on the Arts Council website insisting that the arts literally saved her life. It's part of an initiative by the council to promote the value of public arts, although, obviously, they're not as important as the Olympics. Otherwise we wouldn't be cutting the funding for the arts to pay for the overgrown school sports day.