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Kim Howells (Minister for tourism and broadcasting, btw, so quite what this has to do with him I do not know) is a notorious fathead anyway - he made some twarty comments about the Turner Prize last year, and is responsible for some of the new licensing legislation which subjects live music to tighter regulation:
At the bill's launch in the basement of a Westminster pub, Kim Howells, the minister in charge, was accused of turning his dislike of folk music ("my idea of hell," he once said) into a snobbish vendetta against traditional music. "Traditional music is unamplified, it is not making a noise, and is usually listened to by well-behaved people," said Sheila Mellor, who runs a London folk club, the Cellar Upstairs. "This legislation follows the presumption against live music which goes back a long way. It is rooted in the assumption that live music is something for the lower classes, a bad thing, making a noise."
Mr Howells, who last month described the Turner prize art as "conceptual bullshit", complained yesterday that he had been driven out of his local pub by a single musician with an amplifier. But he insisted that the bill was motivated by complaints about noise and safety concerns. (source).
The Guardian's bit on him says: "Mr Howells is certainly no Blairite automaton spouting Millbank-approved sound bites." For which read (this is my guess) someone who sees himself as a bit of a maverick, telling it like it is and like the on-message types don't dare, and representing the real views of the man in the suburban housing estate. |
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