So much for Culture

Except perhaps in spirit, the Cultural Affairs budget didn't get cut. That's the standing joke on executive these days, by the comment, "Take it out of Cultural Affairs." They don't always do it, but it's happened often enough to give the joke a cutting edge. Cultural Affairs had $6,000 not so long ago, last year it was $3,500 and now it's $3,000. Exec recently decided to increase the levy to the Students Arts Council: more money for culture? Not a bit of it, the cash came straight out of of Cultural Affairs.

But down to business. Sports Officer Peter Thrush gave a fine display of how to look involved by taking an early monopoly in a discussion of the Hello Sailor concert. The way he and others put it, you'd would think it was a clean open and shut case of the Arts Council taking VUWSA for a ride, but the valiant exec are having none of it. At issue was the question of who was doing whom a favour by having booze sold. Affliction with a simple case of pedantry all round, I'd say.

Capping is going to make a loss. Not that the capping controller, Spiro Anastasiou, is incompetent (the mere fact that he was able to pinpoint the exact amount of the loss in dollars and cents — $239.54 — must form a remarkable testimony to his ability) but for some reason the ball isn't expected to produce any revenue.

"Do they anyway?" asked Thrush.

"Well I've made money on them," replied Treasurer Steve Underwood, momentarily distracted from loading another six rounds into his calculator. Thrush then tried a measure of financial scare tactics over the viability of balls in general, and one in particular he was associated with. So Underwood blew nonchalantly into the battery chamber of his machine and remarked, "He tried to blame me too, the bastard." Your humble reporter is not cognisant of all the facts but it could very well have been something to do with last year's Easter Tourney, for which Thrush's name is still held to be mud around the country. Nothing personal, Peter.