No support act

Locally, there may have been some good news for the music venues on Womanby Street recently, but the picture nationally is looking bleaker now that Arts Council England (ACE) have rejected a funding bid from the Music Venue Trust. To add insult to injury, the Trust were only asking for £500,000 - a fraction of the comparatively obscene £96 million awarded to the Royal Opera House.

Little wonder that the Trust's strategic director Beverley Whitrick is dismayed: "We thought we were winning the argument about these clubs being cultural venues, and so this feels like a slap in the face." Given that the situation is, in Whitrick's words, "critical", the consequences of ACE's decision hardly bear thinking about.