Sebastian Scotney, a former investment analyst, writes about jazz. He has been a musician and has been a professor at the Royal College of Music (see http://londonjazz.blogspot.com).

He has also noticed the malign influence that the UK's Licensing Act has had on grassroots music and and his top-ten wishes for British jazz in 2010 include, at number three, “that the importance and value of small music venues becomes more appreciated and widely understood. Local authorities, who lobby through a shadowy little quango called LACORS, tend to make life tricky and expensive for small music venues. Working with the Association of Chief Police Officers, they have consistently blocked the progress of small venue amendments to the 2003 Licensing Act. And yet nobody has EVER justified statistically any causal link between small-scale live music and violence. The Liberal Democrats with their amendments and UK Music have got this one right.”

See Sebastian’s other wishes at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/sebastianscotney/100005815/ten-wishes-for-british-jazz-in-2010/

30/12/09