Someone posted below an article in The Guardian today, on the risk of university closures, condemning theatre, fashion and criminology students as making less valid choices then those pursuing geography and history.

“You think criminology, fashion and theatre don’t require skills,” I responded, “or are new at degree level? Perhaps you think some of us have additional sensory powers and can sniff out criminal behaviour, like dogs, or that creating fashionable, financially successful clothing involves nothing more than a flick of a thin wrist and the elves do all the work while you sleep? As for theatre, perhaps you’d rather get celebrity wannabes from The X Factor to get their Essex gums around Hamlet? After all, Judy Dench shows us there’s no work involved—it’s all so effortless and requires only the blessing of God, not an education in theatrical technique and history, or practice for that matter.”

It seems some can’t wait to drag us into a new Dark Age. What is it with this growing trend towards hating the imaginative and creative? Will the dullards of our once-great nation (in cultural terms) eventually start burning poets, actors and authors at the stake? If so, I suggest at least using the Daily Mail as tinder. Now that is only fit for burning.