Fantastic gig last week at our lovely local Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham where my band Barnstormer 1649 supported the enduringly brilliant Men They Couldn’t Hang who have now served up 35 years of anthemic, stirring and thoroughly socialist and antifascist songs. Never more needed than today.

Our volunteer-run venue with its friendly and welcoming atmosphere is a fitting setting.

But two recent events give us a clear idea of the government’s attitude to popular culture both at local and national level.

Hats off to the wonderful Ropetackle volunteers for keeping the place afloat despite the appalling behaviour of our local Tory Adur council, whose petty and philistine attitude to arts funding — and disregard for the way it is administered — defies belief.

They turned down a £10,000 grant application from the venue, ignorant of or simply dismissing the fact that, in doing so, they were kissing goodbye to the possibility of £40,000 in match funding from the Arts Council and gave a grant to another arts body for which match funding was not available.  

The only conclusion I can come to is that they did so because the “Tackle” is run by a bunch of old lefties and the other one isn’t and that it was done out of pure political spite.

Most local arts centres get far more in local council support than £10,000 — ours gets nothing.  

Of course, the venue will survive thanks to the huge support it enjoys in our community, but the council’s behaviour is disgusting and the sooner we vote them out the better, for this and countless other reasons.

Fortunately we now have a vibrant and energised local Labour group working to do just that.

And, nationally, Brexit and the “hostile environment” the Tories are linking to it are now beginning to take their toll on our music scene.

According to Womad co-founder Peter Gabriel, at least three acts were refused visas to perform at that renowned world music festival last week.

It was precisely my fear of the cultural fallout from Brexit — increased nationalism, suspicion of foreigners, hate speech seen as legitimised by the decision to leave the EU — which convinced me that, despite powerful socialist economic arguments from many at this paper and elsewhere, Brexit was a bad idea.

Each day that passes increases my conviction that I was right.

I myself will be doing one more tour of mainland Europe with my band before we leave. I remember the bad old pre-Schengen days of carnets for instruments and long boring border checks and, while it’s nothing compared to the agonies and indignities refugees face, I really am not looking forward to going through it again and really hope the Musicians Union manages to reach some sort of agreement. We’ll see.

On a much happier note, I give six stars out of five to North East poet Laura Taylor’s fantastic new collection Fault Lines published by Flapjack Press and available from her at gigs and from www.flapjackpress.co.uk/page28.htm.

It’s even better than her last collection, which is saying something. Her poems for her father, battling illness, rallying and then suddenly dying, are simultaneously inspiring and heartbreaking.

The title poem, about a call centre worker’s lot, will make you pause and think next time you are about to angrily or sarcastically dismiss the next one who intrudes into your day.

Her poems for her boots and her breasts, the former danced into disintegration, the latter squashed by investigation, are moving and hilarious. Not Exactly Miss Jean Brodie and Burn and Rave are roars of mid-life defiance.

But the absolute clincher is Revelations, which takes its form from Blake’s Jerusalem and its content from the angry, proud and politically divided working class North West, where some blame the real enemy and some whom they’re told to.

A real poem for our times and the fact that it had to be written makes me seethe with anger. Buy this book. Please.

This weekend: Rebellion Festival in Blackpool. Tonight my band Barnstormer 1649 are playing the Opera House.  It doesn’t get much better than that.
 
Read more from Attila the Stockbroker on his website attilathestockbroker.com, or follow him on Facebook or Twitter on @atilatstokbroka.