[Gayle]

And I agree with you on that.

However, this money was awarded to the council by the Labour government and was specifically for the purpose of arts, events and promotion. This is not money that the council is squandering on arts projects that could be spent on anything else. It can not be diverted in any other direction.

Now, I appreciate that people don't want their taxes spending on anything else other than valuable services - but in effect this money was 'spent' by the government almost a year ago. As far as HBC goes it is either use it or lose it - because it can't be used to prop up any other facilities.

You say that your rant was about filling the market hall with these things but the point was that they were filling empty spaces. A short while ago people on here were complaining about how empty the market hall looked. These activities filled empty stalls for the duration at no additional extra cost (i.e. no cost to the council as it came out of the funding as described above). If paying stall holders had wanted the stalls we would have vacated them immediately.