The decision of Manchester’s Labour-run Council to spend almost half a million pounds on a pop concert starring Alicia Keys has been branded “crazy” by Lib Dems in the city. Manchester City Council is currently in the process of making £296m of cuts to its budget over a two year period – cuts condemned as “ideological” by the Labour Council Leader Sir Richard Leese.
Here’s what the Lib Dem group leader on Manchester City Council, Simon Wheale, had to say about this use of scarce public money:
It is unbelievable that hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on one night’s concert.
Surely with a brilliant star like Alicia Keys, and a great venue like the cathedral, private sponsors would have been queuing up to support MTV without huge spending from Manchester council taxpayers.
Well, quite.
* Nick Thornsby is a day editor at Lib Dem Voice.
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9 Comments
Shocking. Or is it?
Looking at the article linked to, it says that “£250,000 came from a European regeneration pot for events to attract visitors and investment to the city”, so this event seems like a reasonable use of money which could not have gone to “front-line services”. The “town hall events budget contributed £175,000”, which is still a lot, but less than half of the “shock” headline figure, and would the good people of Manchester notice the difference with cuts of £295.825m instead of £296m? Are its Lib Dem critics certain that there is no benefit to the local community from this event, whether it is global publicity or local scallies selling tee shirts? If some funding had not come from the council would the event have had such a prominent Manchester branding? The council claims that coverage of the event delivered “an expected media value in excess of £6.6m”: is this nonsense or a good return on an investment? Other than scale (by orders of magnitude), how is this different from the national investment in hosting the Olympics during a time of austerity? Is this article here anything more than a cheap dig at Labour during their conference in the same city?
I assume you’re in favour of cancelling christmas and new year celebrations because they always use public money? Despite the fact that they bring investment and spending to businesses? Presumably you don’t think that public money should ever be used to support the private sector in this way?
How about cancelling arts and music festivals too?
Museums?
Art galleries?
Public gardens?
@ Peter if such a large amount came from Europe, Then shouldn’t the Manchester branding be replaced by one that says the event was put on my the EU?
@lloyd
According to the article that pot of eurocash was to “attract visitors and investment to the city”, and I’m sure the council would have preferred to use it to promote Manchester rather than Brussels 🙂
I don’t have any particular knowledge of the concert (or Alicia Keys for that matter) and it might well have been an outrageous waste of resources (better spent on an Iron Maiden gig). But I take exception to sensationalised critical headlines that appear to be overblown, misleading, out of context, based on selective snippets of information, etc. whether they’re directed at Lib Dems or by them.
“Surely with a brilliant star like Alicia Keys, and a great venue like the cathedral, private sponsors would have been queuing up…”
Quite, which perhaps hints that Manchester council has a point when it claims that this will reap dividends for the city? Those private sponsors would have expected a return.
Putting this into context…
According to my rough calculations*, Manchester residents will be forking out around £787,000 next month on a police commissioner election that nobody wants, and nobody will be entertained by.
Some £262,000 of that money is what I call the “Lib Dem Electoral Damage Limitation Premium” – Manchester residents’ share of the £25m extra cost incurred when Nick Clegg insisted on the elections being delayed 6 months to boost Lib Dem prospects.
Compared to that, the £175,000 spent by Manchester on this concert seems like outstanding value for money. Something for Simon Wheale to ponder.
* Based on a total cost of £75m, and the population of Manchester being 1.05% of the total population of England & Wales outside London.
Looks like a good investment in my view. Some research show that ROI from cultural investment can be up to 20 times. Of course the return depends on loads of factors, but cultural investment in general gives a very good return.
I think it is high time some politicians learn the difference between costs and investments.
I agree with @g why single outy the Alicia Keyes concert for criticism. What about the current Food & Drink Festival, or the Xmas lights switch on and fassociated concert/firework display or the month long xmas markets which attract people from all over the uk? All councils spend money on events to promote their town/city centres in an attempt to increase footfall….the competition between these centres is massive and events like this are one way of winning the battle.
I believe that the Alicia Keyes concert was a tremendous success (I have friends who were fortunate enough to have won tickets) and it would have been an even greater success had the weather, atrocious on the night, allowed more people to watch on the big screen erected in Cathedral Gardens.
I believe that whilst Manchester City’s Labour Council are guilty of many things their passion and commitment to the City Centre cannot be questioned.
I think Simon Wheale’s was upset that they had booked Alicia Keys as the headline artist rather than a local band …
At least it’s not as bad as suggested by the mouse-over caption
`Manchester Labour’s “crazy” decision to spend £425k on pop concert by Nick Thornsby.’