Simon Rattle: ‘So many musicians are leaving…’

A PR-pumped story in today’s Observer urges the UK Government to bail out freelance musicians ‘or risk losing them forever’.

Sir Simon Rattle is quoted as saying, ‘While some of us working in established institutions have been fortunate to be given grants that help us to hang on, the vast majority of freelancers are in a desperate situation,

‘My worry is that so many musicians will be forced to leave the profession that we will not be able to return to anything like the cultural life that we enjoyed previously. And that this exodus is happening right now, and that it will not be noticed until it is too late.’

All true, and necessary, and very worrying indeed.

But the same concerns apply to every other freelance occupation – anaesthesiologists, novelists, photographers, plumbers, journalists, dental nurses, barristers, actors, interior designers and more. Nobody is raising an outcry on their behalf.