| Clijsters wins with class, and tennis wins with Clijsters All the emotion and histrionics are on the other side of the net when Kim Clijsters takes the court, which is why she won the U.S. Open for the ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Pryor, No. 2 Buckeyes bop Bobcats, 43-7 By RUSTY MILLER 2010-09-18T19:21:15ZCOLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Terrelle Pryor picked apart Ohio University's defense with a school-record 16 consecutive completions on Saturday and No. 2 Ohio State scored early and often to steamroll the Bobcats 43-7.... hosted.ap.org |
Audi and Peugeot to shoot it out in American Le Mans finals It's known as the Petit Le Mans, but Saturday's American Le Mans Series season finale features a marquee matchup that is anything but tiny. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Red Sox owners pledge to remove Liverpool's debt By ROB HARRIS 2010-10-06T18:22:27ZLONDON (AP) -- The owners of the Boston Red Sox got approval from Liverpool's board Wednesday to buy the storied but struggling Premier League club, pledging to wipe out the team's debts if their bid withstands a court challenge.... hosted.ap.org |
Fears for London 2012 legacy as sport along with arts is cut by 30% Sports administrators voice fury at news that £160m in dedicated funding for school sport will be slashed Sport and the arts were today hit with headline cuts of 30% in Treasury funding, leading to warnings that the coalition risked undermining the arts and squandering the legacy from the 2012 Olympics.The cuts, slashing the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's overall budget by 24% over the period to £1.1bn, were met with dismay by senior figures in the arts.But sports administrators were more positive, safe in the knowledge that the 30% cuts would be largely compensated for by changes to the lottery funding formula and that the 2012 Olympics budget had been ringfenced.Their fury was reserved for the news that £160m in dedicated funding for school sport had been slashed and fears that deep cuts to local authority budgets would seriously harm investment in facilities.Arts Council England will face an overall cut of 30%, though it is being asked by the government to pass on cuts of only 15% to "frontline" arts organisations. Even so, according to its chief executive Alan Davey, an estimated 100 arts organisations will lose their public funding.National museums will be relatively protected, taking a cut of around 15%, designed to protect the free entry policy.Critics claim the effect of the cuts to culture will be exacerbated by the impact of the six-year deal with the BBC, which will see the licence fee frozen.The impact on Arts Council England means that aside from cutting its own overheads, it might have to stop funding for a number of arts advocacy and development programmes such as the educational programme Creative Partnerships, and could also hit work including Cultural Olympiad projects. Sir Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre, said: "By any measure, the 30% cut to the Arts Council grant is dismaying. A large number of immensely valuable enterprises will stop stone dead." ACE will be asked to reduce its own operating costs by 50%, having already completed an organisational review in the past 18 months that saw it cutting costs by 21%. In real terms its annual budget will be cut from £449.5m in the current financial year to £349m by 2014.The lottery will be returned to its original "good causes" by 2012, with an estimated extra £50m per year each for the arts and heritage. As expected, given its totemic importance to the coalition and the fact most of the money has been spent, the £9.3bn Olympics budget has been left largely untouched, apart from a further £20m of savings.Athletes training for the 2012 Olympics will have their funding protected and the Games themselves have been largely insulated, but there will be deep cuts of up to 30% in other grassroots sporting bodies.Sports clubs all over the country that had been hoping to invest in refurbishing changing rooms or building new artificial pitches will be among the losers. Any large capital projects not already approved look likely to be scrapped."As a country, we are paying out in debt interest payments every day the entire UK Sport exchequer payments for a year," said sport and Olympics minister Hugh Robertson. "With the deck of cards we inherited, we have got sport out of this in the best possible fashion."But the shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis said that "dismantling support for school sport and imposing disproportionate cuts on arts organisations risks creating a lost generation of young people". He said the coalition were "playing fast and loose with Britain's economic and sporting future".Sport England, which distributes lottery and exchequer funding to grassroots sport via governing bodies such as the England and Wales Cricket Board, will face a cut in exchequer funding of a third. UK Sport, responsible for distributing money to elite athletes in Olympic sports, will see its funding slashed by 27%. But in both cases, a change in the formula for lottery distribution – restoring sport's share to 20% by 2012/13 – will largely mitigate the impact by 2014/15.By then, Sport England's budget will actually have increased to £284m a year. But it is likely that it will also have drive the promised sports participation legacy from the 2012 Olympics in the face of deep cuts to the school sports budget of £160m a year and a huge reduction in expenditure on sports facilities by local authorities.Baroness Sue Campbell, chair of the Youth Sports Trust and UK Sport said: "This is devastating news for the future health and wellbeing of our young people and the army of dedicated, passionate and committed people who, through sport, have delivered such change for young people in recent years.Recently appointed UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl called the settlement "a positive outcome in difficult times". Both UK Sport and Sport England are being asked to cut their administrative overheads, which total £17m a year, in half. Much of that is likely to be achieved when they merge after the 2012 Olympic Games, when they are expected to be encouraged to move from their central London offices to a new home on the Olympic Park."Spending review 2010Tax and spendingSchoolsArts fundingArts policyCharlotte HigginsOwen Gibsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |