The Publishers Association has now posted its response to the Government's consultation process, 'Making sure crime doesn't pay'. It comes to pretty well the same conclusions as Macmillan's. I hope that the Government listens and shelves these proposals to further limit freedom to publish and freedom to read.
On an unrelated Government issue, The Creative Economy Programme, which I mentioned yesterday when I met the team responsible for producing the main part of the Green Paper. It was a very interesting (for me, I cannot speak for them) session. I tried to make the following points from a publisher's point of view (obviously I'm even more unqualified to comment on other creative industries):
We are a global technology-driven industry not a craft industry.
We do not seek Government subsidies in the main and have shown that we can thrive without mollycoddling or intervention.
We do not need civil servants telling us how to improve our productivity or how 'to make us fit for purpose'.
British publishing leads the world in various sectors, most notably in scholarly, educational and children's publishing, something we shoud be very proud of and protect.
Government's role in supporting our creative economy should be to improve book, journal, and electronic information provision in school, public and university libraries - which means more efficient purchasing and management rather than bigger total spend.
To ensure that the schools market in particular remains competitive and is not distorted by cross-subsidies (as in the case of BBC Jam) or corporation tax breaks in the case of certain 'charitable' publishers.
And to help ensure the protection of authorial and territorial copyright.
All the other stuff about regional incentives, diversity, creative grid etc seemed to me well-intentioned, politically correct, expensive and pointless.
One paragraph from the Infrastructure working party executive summary particularly caught my attention - and not just for its jargonlish:
Progressive creative senses of place are formed, and creative people are stimulated, by connectivity of concentrations of infrastructure and activity. A key challenge is to position cultural and creative infrastructure at the heart of place and community, which will allow our cities and regions to flourish as creative hubs that work collectively and with London and the South East for UK creative competitiveness.
I found myself wondering whether the creativity of the impressionists in Paris in the late 19th century would have benefitted from the support of the Department of Culture Media and Sport. They seemed to be pretty creative with just a touch of absinthe.
