Sirs,
Your article “EU ‘wastes’ millions on ‘hip hop’ dance and circus skills”, 19 March 2010 misrepresents the funding available under the EU Culture programme in two important respects:
First, it suggests the EU has earmarked 366 million pounds for culture projects in 2010. In fact this figure relates to the whole seven-year budget period (2007-2013) and covers the 34 countries participating in the Culture programme (EU27 + Croatia, FYROM, Iceland, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Turkey).
Secondly, the biggest grant mentioned in the article – £900,000 for the European laboratory for hip-hop dance – is totally incorrect. The actual sum was only 5% of this figure, that is £45 000.
We fundamentally do not agree with the argument that culture and creative industries should be excluded from EU funding during a recession. This funding is creating thousands of jobs, especially for small businesses. The sector employs five million people across Europe. According to UK government figures, it generates revenues of around £112.5 billion for the UK and employs 1.3 million people here. By supporting the sector the EU is nurturing growth and is in fact helping Europeans to cope with the difficult economic situation.
Yours etc.
Antonia Mochan
European Commission Representation in the UK
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Head of States from Developing countries should be advised on how to tackle poverty, hunger, increasing education and reducing maternal and child mortality. But these goals will not be met because African leaders are based on failed development model of relying on external aid rather than internal policy change to facilitate economic development and growth. And internal policy change is resisted fiercely by the very leaders expressing anguish over the lack of progress because they and their cronies benefit richly from the current system which focuses on securing foreign aid to be spent on thousands of carefully schemed but wasteful interventions in apparent pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals.