And Shakespeare's dad was a glove maker. He's on the citizenship test. Along with The Beatles.

Boris Johnson says Tory confidence vote gave him ‘new mandate’ for his reform agenda: 'Driving a massive, massive agenda for change is a huge, huge privilege to do. And nobody abandons a privilege like that.'

What do you think Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries? 

Is the systematic collapsing of arts and humanities provision in higher education good for culture? Is it good for the future of this country? Is this part of the Massive Agenda of Reform the current Prime Minister is hoping 3 terms will enable?  What an utterly bleak outlook for culture. You are suffocating it.

If you did another of your consultation papers and asked about starving the arts and humanities of resource you would get, no doubt, a similar outcome to the one about the privatisation of Channel 4: 96% against.

And you would no doubt ignore that one too, because this government is not interested in Culture - or at least, it is only interested in protecting the voices, writing and cultural production of who they see as their own. I'm sure Jacob Rees Mogg has strong opinions about the sort of cultural production he wants to see thrive and what he sees as having 'low value.' 

What do you think one of Britain's best loved artists, Turner would say? A man who was anti Establishment and came from a 'modest lower class family?' What would Shakespeare say? Or the working class Liverpudlians Ringo Starr and George Harrison?

I wonder what all the people who flock to blockbuster art exhibitions of Turner or Hockney would say if they were to fully consider that these artists would not have existed if suppression of all but the most privileged voices - and those condoned by the establishment of the time - had succeeded. Turner was derided and ridiculed for his class, for his difference.

Every single artist, writer, musician who ever worked was critical of the status quo. That is the job of art. That is the job of culture. It is what keeps language alive. It is what keeps us alive. And it is why you want to suppress them. They imperil control of prevailing narratives and dominant culture.  

The systematic destruction of the arts and humanities is fully in keeping with the privatising of Channel 4.

And does it follow an agenda of 'levelling up' to destroy the arts and humanities at universities like Sheffield Hallam, with more, no doubt, to follow?

I am sure universities like Oxford and Cambridge will be able to protect their literature departments. Don't you think Culture Secretary that it is not much in the way of 'levelling up' to starve universities of resource that guarantee a somewhat more diverse range of writers and thinkers than the ones that Oxford and Cambridge will produce?

This is as much about levelling up as destroying a Channel whose remit is to serve our communities, all our communities, the length and breath of the country - to provide resource and platform for our voices, all of our voices - not just the ones the government wishes to protect and promote The ones in keeping with their Massive Agenda.

It's necessary to destroy culture if you want to destroy critical thinking, silence voices, control narrative - as important as destroying independent journalism and trustworthy news.  Massive Agendas that involve corroding public standards, undermining democracy, relinquishing honesty, integrity, decency, lining the pockets of the greedy and powerful, consolidating control require the active suppression of critical thinking. 

It is entirely to be expected that the government are invested in systematic cultural vandalism, isn't it Nadine Dorries?  And it seems to be, perversely, your job, Culture Secretary, to help smooth the way. Shame on you.

Please keep signing and sharing this petition. Voices are being actively silenced, by the withdrawal of the oxygen of resource, time, opportunity. Anyone interested in the culture of this country needs to do something to protect it.  

Because, as the phenomenal writer Arundhati Roy has said so well:

“There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”

The current government is degrading democracy, undermining rule of law, degrading public office, eroding the protection of human rights, dismantling the NHS, weakening education, starving cultural production of oxygen and driving us ever further into a cost of living crisis.