A ’Umble Arts Officer’s Lament

(to the tune of O My Darling Clementine and sung with immense pathos)

Devolved funding was the answer
To the arts’ great decline.
First I read it, then I said it
And believed it at the time.

Chorus

O my Arts Board, O my Arts Board,
O my Regional Arts Board.
First they praised it, then they razed it;
O my Regional Arts Board.

All the money went in one pot
To be spread far and wide
Across the Regions as dominions
To the Arts Council’s pride.

Chorus

O my Arts Board, O my Arts Board,
O my Regional Arts Board.
First they praised it, then they razed it;
O my Regional Arts Board.

In a gutter of Great Peter Street,
Where the walls are lined with gold,
Strums a busker, once a stakeholder
Who couldn’t stomach what they were told.

Chorus

O my Arts Board, O my Arts Board,
O my Regional Arts Board.
First they praised it, then they razed it;
O my Regional Arts Board.

---

For those of you without radical history, there is an earlier parody from before World War II:-

Leon Trotsky was a Nazi,
And that’s a well-known fact;
First I read it, then I said it
Till the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

Chorus

O my Stalin, O my Stalin
O my Stalin’s Party Line.
First they changed it, rearranged it;
O my Stalin’s Party Line.

In the cellar of the Kremlin
In the year of thirtynine,
Sit a Russian and a Prussian
To decide the Party Line.

Chorus

O my Stalin, O my Stalin
O my Stalin’s Party Line.
First they changed it, rearranged it;
O my Stalin’s Party Line.

In Siberia, in Siberia
Where the winter winds do whine
Sits a Bolshie, sits a Bolshie
Who forgot the Party Line.

Chorus

O my Stalin, O my Stalin
O my Stalin’s Party Line.
First they changed it, rearranged it;
O my Stalin’s Party Line.

"History repeats itself: the first time tragedy, the second farce" Karl Marx