I've just returned from an Arts Council do with a broken heart.

This was a Cultural Leadership launch billed as being lead by Tessa Jowl, Secretary for Media, Culture and Gambling.

I arrived to be told, from a source close to Peter Hewitt, the Arts Council's Chief Exec, that funding to the arts is to be cut by 5% in 2008 and that the Arts Council are not going to fight it because they believe there is no point - it is a done deal with our increasingly dissapointing labour government.

The Arts Council should be providing leadership to the professional artists working in the UK and this is a bit of a kick in the teeth. To lay back and not put up a very public fight feels as if they are abandonning us. Its a little gutless.