When I Hear the Word Culture, I Abolish a Quango

Daveybloke, the Cuddly Cinema Critic, has been doing his bit to counter the left-wing slur that all Thatcherites are cheery philistines. Admittedly, the stereotype does have some evidence in its favour, from the old bag herself (whose idea of literature began with Kipling and ended with Frederick Forsyth) through the Venerable Tony (whose aesthetic preferences were dictated by the public-relations requirements of the moment) to the likes of Liam Fox and Michael Gove, whose respective tastes probably run to Bulldog Drummond and Malory Towers.

Daveybloke was speaking of the cinema, since there is relatively little money in mere books in and of themselves. He was responding to a does-my-right-honourable-master-not-agree query by his cuddly MP for Watford, where Warner Brothers have just bought some studios which the Government does not consider worth bothering about. "There is a great tip and key for film-makers here," Daveybloke profundified. "That is, we have got to make films that people want to watch and films which will benefit beyond themselves as they will also encourage people to come and visit our country." Away with the dreaded UK Film Council; away with state funding for self-indulgent losers past and present - such art-house bores as Peter Greenaway, Terence Davies, Derek Jarman, Sally Potter, Kevin Macdonald, Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell. What we need is, as always, to do what the Americans are already doing, only with less enthusiasm. We need large-scale, mega-budget, effects-laden sequel-fests, funded by corporations in return for product placements and aimed at children and not-very-bright adolescents and George Osborne - and also, apparently, at people who will come and visit our country in order to go to the cinema. We need lots of British script doctors who can think further inside the box. We need more Michael Winners and Tony Scotts and Adrian Lynes and Hugh Hudsons and a British Ron Howard and a British Chris Columbus and perhaps a British Uwe Boll - a film-maker whose entire career is based on tax write-offs for businesses. We need a British Hollywood.