Why does the Scottish executive keep making such a pig's ear of its arts policy? Last week it published a draft culture bill which was met with an immediate chorus of disapproval. The bill's idea, already established, that the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen will merge to form a new body, Creative Scotland, has been seen at best as unnecessary tinkering, and at worst as undermining what little hope the country had of shoring up its film industry.
Its suggestion that Scottish ministers would have the power "to give directions to Creative Scotland which they must follow" has been taken to mean an erosion of the arm's-length principle that has characterised arts funding since the war. And the bill's watering down of the ideas in James Boyle's 2005 Cultural Commission, results in a draft policy considered to be toothless, meaningless and a waste of the £513,400 invested in Boyle's report.
The strange thing is it doesn't have to be like this. The powers devolved to the Scottish parliament in areas such as education, health and prisons have a tendency to attract more bad news stories than good. Yet the small amount of money invested in the arts roughly 1% of that which goes into health produces a disproportionately high level of positive coverage.
What easier way to proclaim the achievements of devolution than investing in the flag of cultural success?
It's not even as if the executive would find it difficult to do this. It could start with the first minister, Jack McConnell, whose wife Bridget McConnell is in charge of culture and sport at Glasgow City Council. That connection alone should be enough to give him cultural credibility - even if he has been spotted, not once but twice, watching Mamma Mia! at the Edinburgh Playhouse.
Then there was his high-profile St Andrew's day speech of 2003 in which he promised to put culture at the heart of everything the government did. "Each member of the Scottish cabinet will use the power of cultural activity to help them in their work - culture will not be an add on, it will be at the core of everything we do," he said.
Although there's little evidence of that pledge being put into practice, there's ample evidence of the arts being treated better than they once were.
Without this administration there would be, for example, no National Theatre of Scotland, an institution that alone accounts for an extra £4.1m a year into the cultural economy. And from next year, the executive claims to be spending an extra £20m a year on culture.
Yet still the image persists of a government able to see the arts only in terms of its own social directives. In one of its more heart-sinking clauses, the draft bill says Creative Scotland will work with the executive "to help achieve public policy objectives". The image isn't helped by the unsettling number of arts ministers they've got through, few of them including the current incumbent Patricia Ferguson showing any real passion for the arts, let alone the capacity to fight culture's corner.
The debate, however, isn't all one-sided and people have until March 30 to submit comments on the draft culture bill.
