Sometimes, a good column provokes some action. The piece that’s motivated me this morning comes from Joyce McMillan, who writes powerfully for The Scotsman about the acute problems facing Scotland’s cultural sector.

 

It has been a “chilling” week for the Scottish arts sector, she observes. “With hindsight, the sudden collapse last week of the Centre for The Moving Image charity which ran the Edinburgh Filmhouse, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the Belmont Cinema in Aberdeen, may come to be seen as one of those iconic events that help to define an era; in this case, a post-lockdown time of severe difficulty for all those art-forms that involve getting people out of the house and bringing them together in public spaces, to experience what cannot be appreciated in full on our screens at home.”

 

 

 

As Joyce explains, audiences are down after Covid, while costs are up heavily because of soaring energy costs. They could put prices up… but so many of their customers are feeling the pinch too, that could make matters only worse. It’s a terrible bind, and one has to fear more of our cultural institutions could go the same way as the Film Festival.

 

 

The action Joyce’s column has inspired is simple: I’m going to be scouring the listings later on, looking for something to head out to - a gallery, museum or theatre trip I can enjoy this weekend, ideally with my family. We missed these treats so much during the dark days of lockdown. Having collectively survived that grim period, it would be a tragedy were we to lose more of these institutions now.

 

 

Meanwhile, we continue to keep an eye on the unfolding - continuing, never ending, it seems - political crisis in London. 

 

 

Our Westminster correspondent Alex Brown is a busy man at the moment - I think he’d maybe argue it’s been quite a year, in fact - and one of his most recent dispatches captured the mood in the corridors of Westminster. “MPs afterwards spoke of morale being at its “worst ever”, describing the Prime Minister's performance as ‘tired’ and ‘delusional’.”

 

 

 

Letters of no confidence are already being filed by disgruntled Conservative MPs - they never voted for Truss, of course - and the Prime Minister’s removal is seen as a certainty at some point reasonably soon. With the Chancellor flying back early, as I type, from meetings with the IMF in Washington, today may be another important one in this crisis, with potentially direct implications for our mortgages, livelihoods and the nation’s future. We’ll keep you posted.

 

 

If that’s all too much - and I know it is, for so many people - we have plenty coming up to keep you distracted. Aside from our brilliant arts section in tomorrow’s paper and online (let’s all get out to a show!) we’ve got Simple Minds’ front-man Jim Kerr, talking to Janet Christie about his 40 years with the band (and his life in Sicily). And don’t miss Allan Massie writing about a new collection of John le Carre’s correspondence, which reveals much about the man.

 

 

Thank you, as ever, for your support of The Scotsman - I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

 

 

Best wishes,