‘Welsh Writing Sucks’ – New York Daily
News July 30 2012.
The Tax-Payer and the Welsh Literati
Welcome and thank you for coming.
Now, like everybody here today, I care
about Wales.
I care about its education, its health, its
economy.
No-one can doubt that we live in
difficult times. Wales in particular is
suffering more than the rest of the UK.
For instance, where £2000 is borrowed
for each Scot, £6000 is borrowed per
capita in Wales.
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Private companies are going down on a
grand scale and private investment
along with it.
The Welsh reliance on the public sector
along with its dependence on a
subsidy/tax-payer culture of support is
both unsustainable and more to the
point, in my view at least, extremely
regressive.
Wales must, if it is to thrive in the 21st
Century, start looking outwards and
beyond instead of constantly seeking
refuge in the deluded dreams of
ancient grandeur and obsessing about
the Mabinogion, laverbread and Dylan
Thomas.
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It is only right that History teaches, but
it must never, never rule.
If Wales is to thrive, if it is to have a
future in the modern world, it must
start being productive and competitive.
It must innovate. It must seek new
markets, new challenges. And more
than anything else it must put
education first. I will come to this last
point later.
I think we can all agree that something
must be done. Radically and quickly.
So, before I progress to the nuts and
bolts as it were of the Tax-payer and
the ‘Welsh literati’, as I like to call
them. I need to address the
fundamentals of the public purse being
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used to fund the Arts, in this case,
books.
Let me be absolutely clear, I AM NOT
AGAINST PUBLIC FUNDING FOR THE
ARTS PER SE.
NEITHER AM I AGAINST PUBLIC
FUNDING FOR THE PROMOTION OF
WELSH CULTURE AND WELSH
LANGUAGE BOOKS, these are entirely
different issues
Insert – we are longer in the 1970’s,
when challenging the Establishmnet
was a no-go area……albeit that I am
challenging a Welsh Est, which is alive
and kicking as I speak.
.
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In this talk I am however addressing
the rather unique position that books,
of themselves, hold in the Arts.
Tonight I am talking about subsidy for
English language writing.
The argument for state funding for the
Arts has largely been won. The
prevailing view in the Arts world is that
non-commercial activity ie say opera,
theatre, museums etc can be good for
tourism, hospitality, local economies
and so on as well as driving inward
investment and being a generally good
thing for society.
Now, ‘Books’ are an entirely different
matter.
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In my view, they are purely (as far as I
can see) commercial activity and bring
none of the above eg a collection of
poems about Snowdonia is hardly
going to add substance to societal
endeavour, is it?
Yes, books can have something to do
with promoting culture but in an
entirely different way from say, the
performing arts.
‘The promoting culture’ argument was
used when S4C was in trouble and
what was Jeremy Hunt’s response?
“ But no-one watches it!”
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Where books are concerned or poetry
for that matter, tax-payer funding is no
longer needed, full stop.
There’s the ebook. No printing costs,
no burden on the tax-payer. Under
£100 to whack a collection of verse or a
novel up on Amazon.
Job done!
Organisations such as the Welsh Books
Council (by the way, no other country
in the world has a ‘books’ Council, but
Australia and America have ‘Children’s
Boo Council’s)and Literature Wales
(formerly the Welsh Academy) are now
the main conduits of tax-payer funding
for Welsh writers and Welsh publishers
– both bodies I stress are unelected.
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Now, in 1995 The Arts Council of
Wales, which at that time was largely
responsible for the funding of Welsh
writing, was hauled before a
Westminster Public Accounts
Committee following complaints of
serious mismanagement and
procedural malfeasance.
The evidence against the Arts Council
resulted in them losing the authority to
distribute tax-payer money to the
Welsh literati. Instead and perhaps
somewhat predictably, this onerous
public duty passed to the Welsh
Academy, or Literature Wales as it is
now called.
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So, if you like, one quango just became
another by a different name.
It is apparent that the Arts Council has
learnt precisely nothing. My recent
attempts at communication with its CE
and Chair resulted in unreturned
phone calls, prevarication and
cowardice. In other words they refused
to enter into any meaningful dialogue
with me. Albeit that their masters are
ultimately you and I.
Anyway, these august bodies would
have you, the tax-paying public, believe
that the market-based artistic system
which flourished for centuries, and
which produced the British cultural
heritage we now admire, in periods
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when incomes were far smaller than
they are today, cannot now function or
survive without tax-payer subsidy.
This of course is arrant nonsense. Were
this the case then how is it we have a
cultural heritage at all.
The concentration of patronage in the
hands of one body ie The Welsh
Assembly being the General and Lit
Wales and the WBC being its
soldiers,(tasked with promoting Welsh
writing and publishing in Wales)
inevitably imposes some degree of
standardisation on the character of taxpayer funded works. The only result
being success for the mundane and
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mediocre and obstacles for the new
and innovative.
Since the early sixties when the WBC
and Lit Wales came into being and the
roller coaster of profligate tax-payer
funded subsidy began, I ask you all to
consider this….where are the giants of
Welsh writing? Where are the Welsh
Seamus Heaney’s and James Joyce’s or
for that matter the Jeffrey Archers and
James Pattersons? Or even the odd
bookish shade of grey?
Did Lady Charlotte Guest or Dylan
Thomas receive hand-outs from the
tax-payer??
I’ll tell you where they all are……..in the
surreal aspirations of academic
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endeavour and rarefied literary selfindulgence, that’s where.
Since the 1950’s there hasn’t been one
single Welsh writer of any national or
international note to hit the tarmac
beyond the Severn Bridge.
Although, Welsh publishers will have
you believe that they publish ‘good’
work ie Independent Bus Operators in
North Wales, 5 books on ‘Real Cardiff’
including one on Cardiff by Bike’ (Peter
Finch, ex CE of Lit Wales and Tony
Curtis – neither are the actors!) Plenty
of ‘Reality’ books eg Llanelli, Pembroke
etc. ‘How to make Welsh Cakes……oh
and 120 books on Pembrokeshire, I’m
not even going to start on Snowdonia!
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Ten books on Welsh Place Names, ten
books on Kyffin Williams
The hunger to ‘create’ for an audience
has been stifled, the warts and all of
learning the trade have been burnt
away, the cleansing of rejection and
reality of commercial brutality is no
more. And why?
Let’s write some stuff, to hell with the
quality, I’ll get my £10,000 advance and
be published by a Welsh publisher
whatever happens. Bugger the taxpayer, the WBC and Literature Wales
are dull enough to fork up!
The unwitting tax-payer has destroyed
both incentive and true talent.
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But be that as it may.
A few months ago I put Freedom of
Information requests into the WBC, Lit
Wales, and the Arts Council of Wales.
The data I received back for the years
2008 – 2012 was both astonishing and
extraordinary.
It must be noted here that Liki Shenkin,
CE of Lit Wales refused outright on
three occasions to accommodate my
requests.
Lit Wales is apparently outside the
provisions of the FIAct.
I am still waiting to hear what legal
premise they are adopting to support
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this assertion, albeit that they are
funded by HM Treasury, ie you.
Insert -another Welsh institution, the
University of Wales, has been attacked
(Wales on Line Sept 17th 2012) has just
been accused of a ‘disgraceful’lack of
transparency).
The right to remain silent has been
removed from the criminal law,
perhaps Parliament needs to
reconsider the legal position in relation
to tax-payer funded institutions.All the
data I refer to can be fully
corroborated by the Organistions I
refer to.
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Now, before I go any further, I need to
point out in the interests of fairness,
that just about every Welsh publisher
operating in Wales was cordially
invited to join me here today and take
part in a panel discussion or debate.
No-one apparently was available to
attend.
The same applied the WBC and
Literature Wales. Everyone – and I
mean everyone, even Board members I
have been told, are all either ill this
weekend or abroad. Indeed Y Lolfa told
me back in February that all their staff
were sick, to which I responded ‘Good
God, what on earth hell have they got?
Delayed action Bird-Flu?!’
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I leave you the audience to draw your
own conclusions where their
reluctance shall we say…..to raise their
heads above the parapet, is concerned.
So, what was in this data I received? I
won’t bore you with too much detail
but I will give you a bird’s eye view.
Now, do please remember that we live
in an Age of Austerity – but not so it
would seem where the elite Welsh
writing community is concerned.
I would like to deal firstly with the
Welsh Books Council’s distribution of
tax-payers’ money.
Seren Publishers - £557,078
Honno - £239,708
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Y Lolfa - £687,507 who were recently
quoted in the Western Mail as being
enthusiastic about the ebook…..
Parthian -£350,000 to date just for the
Library of Wales series. One can only
guess how much the proprietor,
Richard Davies, has received since he
set up the company to publish his own
book, back in 1993 but it is certainly in
the region of a million plus.
A nice living if you can get it!
Gomer Press a staggering £1,409,493
with more in the pipeline apparently.
NB These figures relate to the past few
years only. How much each of these
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publishers have received over many
years is incalculable.
One must ask here, why on earth they
need all this money, the ebook etc
etc…….the WBC doesn’t even use
Amazon Kindle, too expensive
apparently!
Welsh writers grants £1,409, 493
Giving a grand total of £4,000,000 –
and this is just over the past few years.
Imagine how much tax-payers money
has been spent since 1961.
It’s frightening.
Allow me to give you some examples of
Grants paid to Welsh writers.
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Mal Pope - £4000 (WBC) for his
autobiography ‘Old enough to Know
better.’ Well, that’s debatable!
Owen Money - £6000 (WBC) for his
auto biography ‘Money Talks’ – doesn’t
it just!
Chis Needs, £7,500 (WBC) for his auto
biography ‘And there’s more’. There
certainly is.
Kevin Johns - £3000 (WBC) for his
autobiography ‘Oh yes it is’. Well noone can argue with that!
Howard Marks - £6000 (WBC) for his
autobiography on the lurid world of
prison and drugs.
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As far as I am aware none of these
people are short of a few bob, at least I
don’t think any of them are signing on!
Do please note that these particular
recipients of tax-payer largesse are
only the tip of the iceberg. There are
hundreds more.
To conclude then, the over-stretched
public purse is expected to pay for
Welsh celebrities to write and publish
their life stories –or ego trips
depending on your point of view.
We also it seems have a curious
situation with our academic stars are
concerned, particularly those of a
poetic bent. Eg……
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Aberystwyth University -Dr Tffany S.
Atkinson - £3,849 (Lit Wales - Poetry)
Bangor University– Dr Zoe Skoulding –
£6000 (Lit. Wales) (Seren)
Glamorgan University – Tiffany Murray
£4500 (WBC)
Swansea – Dr Fflur Daffyd £5000 (Lit
Wales), £3500 (WBC/ Author Advance
Grant)
Jasmine Donahaye - £5000 (Lit Wales)
for a Collection of Poems titled
‘Misappropriations’. What a title!
Jon Gower - £8000 (Lit Wales)
…………
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Hefin Wyn £23,500 (Lit Wales 4
Burseries) for such works as ‘A History
of Welsh popular music between 1980
– 2000’ in Welsh of course.
Tony Bianchi £17500 (Lit Wales 3
Burseries) Welsh/English language
novels/Poetry
Mr Bianchi is also being paid by the
WBC at the moment to do a survey on
the credibility of specialised Welsh
Magazines.
Geraint Lewis £15,500 (Lit
Wales/Welsh langauge x 2 Burseries)
Dr Matthew Francis £4500 (Lit Wales)
Now please, don’t forget that not only
are Welsh writers subsidised but so of
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course are their Welsh publishers. So
you have a situation where firstly the
writer receives a hand-out to write the
book and then the publisher receives a
hand-out to publish it. So, a double
whammy for the tax-payer if you like. A
double insult too. Extraordinary I know.
But the best is yet to come.
Some of these tax-payer gratuities are
euphemistically called by Literature
Wales ‘Buying Time Burseries’.
In other words, to use good old
fashioned ‘down to earth speak’,Welsh
writers are given money from the
public purse to stay at home and write
stuff that few people are ever likely to
read and that’s assuming it is even
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published, which it doesn’t have to be
according to Lit Wales’ own rules! I
mean it.
In England there are no writers’ grants
unless you work for it eg a Royal
Literary Fellowship of up to £13,000
but one has to teach for two days a
week.
Welsh ‘writers’ however, whose work I
may add, is never tested by rigorous
commercial scrutiny receive thousands
of pounds to stay at home and tap
away at their so-called creative key
boards! God forbid that the tax-payer
should expect them to actually shift
their backsides into the real world and
actually ‘earn’ a living. Oh no, let’s give
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these people some glorified unmeanstested dole instead. The tax-payer
won’t mind.
It’s a disgrace and an appalling abuse
of the hard-pressed tax-payer!
Self-publishing, risking their own
money like thousands of other
struggling writers across the UK is of
course out of the question.
I mean, what the hell, the tax-payer
can afford it.
As for the publishers, all they have to
do to stay on the gravy train is to show
that the title they are publishing will,
and I quote from the WBC’s own
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website, ‘….be made towards expected
deficits’.
Unbelievable I know, in other words
the tax-payer is only to be nobbled for
books that tank and don’t sell!
Failure it seems is the order of the day
and it is to be celebrated and funded
by you, the unsuspecting tax-payer.
(Block funding – NO SCRUTINY, NO
ACCOUNTABILITY)
Of course you won’t get any sales
figures for all these subsidised titles,
the WBC and Welsh publishers are far
too modest. The reply is always the
same. And yet again I quote -
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‘That information is commercially
confidential’
Well, I can give you one shining
example. Geraint Talfon Davies’ (You
know Chairman of Welsh Nat Op
founder of IWA, former Director of BBC
Wales etc etc His book ‘At Arms
Length’ (You have to chuckle at some
of these titles) has sold 179 copies
since it was published in 2008..
Nielsens. For the record, Seren, Mr
Davies’s publisher’s were paid to
publish his book by the tax-payer, as
far as I am aware we have yet another
‘author’ who is not short of a few bob
having his book paid for by the public
purse.
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Well oddly enough, only a couple of
months ago the formidable Labour MP
Margaret Hodge of Parliament’s Public
Accounts Committee was heard to say,
‘Where public money is being spent by
Companies they cannot hide behind
‘commercial confidentiality’. It is simply
not good enough. It’s not on. It’s
unacceptable!’
IWA ‘Independent? That’s a laugh, the
WBC funds their Literary Section and
this year they’ve had £6000 from the
ACW
I now come to the funding of Welsh
Literature Festivals. Something I know
a little about on a personal level!
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The Laugharne Lit Fest received £20,00
from the ACW and a further £3000
form Lit Wales, odd I know as Lit Wales
is merely an agent of the ACW, so
really it’s £23,000 from ACW. All from
from the public purse of course.
Dinefwr £65,000 from Arts Council of
Wales ie Lit Wales, yes I know they’re
still at it.
Lauharne sold apprx 200 tickets and
Dinefwer 300, albeit that both sets of
organisers hailed the events as brilliant
successes. Indeed Lit Wales’ own office
told me personally that 2500 people
attended the Dinefwr job.
So most of the people who attended
(mostly Welsh ‘writers’ and ‘poets’ that
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very few people have ever heard of)
were paid to attend……free tickets,
fees, expenses of contributors etc etc
(£62,000 Dinefwr £20,000 Laugharne,
both made net losses to the tax-payer
of approx £50,000 in the case of
Dinefwr and at least £20,000 in the
case of Laugharne)
So, a nice £100,000 odd thousand
pounds of tax-payers’ ‘hard earned’ for
the elite Welsh literati to spend a few
days showing each other how clever
they are, albeit that no-one buys their
work, but again what the hell, its only
tax-payers dosh!
And what about this :31
One of the organisers of Laugharne has
received a Creative Wales Award of
£20,00 this year
(Insert- ten Welsh ‘poets’off on a ten
day jolly to the Smithsonian,
Washington, all expenses paid plus
£100 a day spending money. One
‘poet’ even managed to extend the
holiday on account of the generous
expenses!)
One last point, The Wales Book of the
Year is also heavily subsidised, this year
the £12, 000 awarded to Welsh writers
and poets in cash prizes all comes from
the public purse. And of course the
submitted works are also paid for by
the tax-payer eg Seren’s publication of
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Patrick Mc Guinesses The Last Hundred
Days was one of 20 new books that
Seren received a WBC grant of £94, 235
for.Please note that Mr McGuiness is
also director of Seren. A publishing
grant of £2700 was received for
Richard Gwyn’s The Vagabonds
Breakfast (A drunk’s progress around
Europe apparently, well I was more
ambitious – the Middle East!). Jon
Gower received an author advance
grant of £8500 for his Welsh language
title plus a publishing grant allocated
out of the £118,000 Gomer has
received to publish 48 new books. And
do not forget that Mr Gower has
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already received an £8000 bursery
from Literature Wales.
A £10,000 bursary from Lit Wales was
awarded to poetry prize winner Karen
Owen, this is on top of her publishers
(Baathas) receiving a tax-payer grant of
£34,000 for 8 books, and of course the
Prize money. I’m assuming Karen
Owen’s collections of poetry are
included in this. No doubt her
publishers will confirm or deny this in
due course.
AGAIN NO SCRUTINY, NO
ACCOUNTABILITY WHAT THE HELL IS
TH WELSH ASSEMBLY DOING WHAT
THE HELL IS THE ARTS COUNCIL OF
WALES DOING?????
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NO QUALITY CONTROL
WHEN DOES NEW AND FRESH TALENT
GET A CHANCE? IF YOU’RE NOT IN THE
CLIUB BUGGER OFF
Liki Shenkyn (Lleuce Siencyn) or Lucy
Jenkin for those unfamiliar with the
Welsh language, the Chief Executive of
Literature Wales, has said of the
Awards, ‘The strength of the short-list
manifests the flourishing publishing
industry that exists in Wales today,
defiant in the light of the current
economic climate.’
A ‘flourishing publishing industry’!
‘Defiance’!
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I nearly fell off my chair when I read
this. The unbelievable arrogance, the
disingenuous denial of truth and total
disregard of how the Welsh publishing
industry is actually funded and the fact
that it makes a huge net loss where
Welsh GDP is concerned is utterly
astonishing, if not shocking. There
would be no publishing industry in
Wales if it wasn’t for the tax-payer. End
of story!
The Welsh publishing ‘industry’ is
nothing more than a parasitical, elitist
carbuncle on the hide of a struggling
and failing Welsh economy.
(Insert - And what about the blatant
nepotism and cronyism, that has been
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encouraged for years eg the same
editors being used by Honno, Seren
and Parthian.
BBC Wales, Western Mail wouldn’t
publish any of the above and why?
They’re all in it together! WM Supports
LW, Betsan Powys daughter of former
Head of BBC North Wales, Vaughan
Roderick son of senior producer Selwyn
Roderick, Rhodri Talfan Davies, the
Director of BBC Wale,son of Geraint
Talfon Davies former Controller of BBC
Wales, the list goes on.
Insert -Jasmine Danahaye, ex editor of
WBC and previous student of Wyn
Thomas, Chairman of WBC. All the
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above). Now editor of ‘The Planet’ Arts
mag funded by Lit Wales – c 300?
Of course one will never obtain sales
figures for the winning works. I once
again leave you the audience to
consider the Awards credibility, in my
view it is nothing more than a
hopelessly exaggerated testimonial to
Vanity publishing – which would be
fine, if you, the tax-payer weren’t
paying the bill.
The Health Service in Wales is in hock
for 300 million.
Cancer patients can’t get the drugs
they need because they are too
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expensive. Wheelchairs are in short
supply, families can’t get the care they
need for their elderly relatives and yet
the Welsh Assembly feels it is morally
right to dish out millions of pounds of
your money for a few people to
propagate a Welsh ‘literary’ agenda
that few are interested in, whose
books, magazines and pamphlets
patently don’t pay their way and most
importantly of all, contributes precisely
nothing for the overall good of society.
The Welsh education system we all
know is in a parlous if not critical state.
Funding for the Arts would be better
served if it went into teaching our
young about music, literature, theatre
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etc. Museums, theatres, art galleries all
have a place, all have an audience.
Promoting new talent. They are all a
force for the good of society but what
does this exclusive club of the chosen
few do for the cultural well-being of
our youth, our future, our economy,
for it is our young who will one day be
the arbiters of what is culturally
civilising and what isn’t.
It is time Welsh publishers and Welsh
writers operated under normal
commercial rules. The State simply can
no longer afford to indulge you. There
are far more important priorities to
consider.
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And for all you Welsh writers out there,
genuine talent will always prevail.
Good writing will always be read and
will always sell. If your work has these
essential qualities then you don’t need
the exhausted tax-payer to fund it – full
stop.
Get out there and say ‘Hello’ to the real
world! It doesn’t bite, you know.
This tax-payer funded farce, paid for by
many and yet to the benefit of so few,
must stop. The cliques, the cronyism
and whispered favouritism – ie money
going to the same people, must stop.
In these hard times, where cuts in
health, welfare and education are the
order of the day, how can these
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payments from an embattled Treasury
be justified?
Let the Chief Executives of Literature
Wales and the Welsh Books Council
face a disabled wheelchair user and
say, ‘Look, we’re frightfully sorry old
chap, but we can’t afford to give you a
new wheelchair, you see Welsh poetry
and prose that very few people read
must have priority. But trust us, Wales
will be culturally richer in the long-run.’
It is all an unmitigated national scandal.
But more than anything else it is
downright immoral.
The same people have been getting the
same money for years. The stench of
corruption and jobs for the boys is in
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urgent need of some serious
investigation. So, if there are any
investigative journalists in the audience
please start digging. Your efforts I am
confident will be rewarded and the taxpayer will be forever in your debt.
What should be done 1 Restore the WBC to its original brief
ie the promotion of the Welsh. The
Welsh Assembly’s original goal of
selling Welsh English language books
outside Wales had patently failed.
2 Retain the Distribution Centre but on
a commercial basis only.
3 Stop funding English language titles
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4 Literature Wales should be funded
for Welsh language titles only.
5 Make Local Authority grants
voluntary instead of mandatory.
6 Retain Ty Newydd as a charity only –
no subsidy.
Resources should be directed at new
Welsh talent, not the old, and
subsidised elites who wouldn’t even
get past a London agents doormat let
alone a publisher’s.
Professionals and administrators with
solid commercial acumen and
experience should be recruited to
innovate and take Welsh literature into
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the future and see that it reaches a
global audience.
It is a nonsense that ivory-towered
academics who don’t know one end of
a balance sheet from another should
be running these organisations, they
are not fit for purpose!
To conclude:Please note that the ACW has already
been denounced in the past by both
Houses of Parliament and the Welsh
Assembly.
It seems from the evidence I have
adduced that it has learnt very little.
1 Funding patently doesn’t work – the
books don’t sell!
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2 It makes the funded writers lazy.
3 It makes the funded publisher’s
complacent.
4 It eliminates any quality threshold.
5 There is no other country in the
world that adopts this funding model.
6 It’s an inappropriate use of public
funds.
7It belongs to the realms of the private
sector.
8There is no competency threshold for
Welsh publishers.
9 Welsh publishers simply don’t have
the commercial experience or
marketing expertise to succeed.
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10 There is absolutely no advantage to
our young or society as a whole.
The whole sorry system is –
Bad for the Tax-Payer
Bad for Welsh writers
Bad for Wales
Lastly, and perhaps more crucially, with
the ebook and new technologies, are
‘publishers’ in the traditional sense
needed at all? And how can printing
costs etc for tax-payer grants be
justified???
Someone must stand up for the taxpayer and shout loud and clear,
‘It stops now, enough!
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NB For further information and
updates, please see my Blog
julianruck.wordpress.com
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