Blue is the Newest Colour

I've paused from painting the doors of the Museum of Unreason a lovely shade of 'Conservative Blue' (part of Dulux's 'Political Range' of paints) to celebrate the fact that our great nation is in the safe hands of a single political party. Surely that's infinitely preferable to the prospect of a further 5 years of ridiculously compromised coalition government, that led to stability, moderation and economic growth - nobody wanted that.

Museums should welcome unrestrained right wing political control - why might you ask? Let the words of Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport reassure you,

"...don’t let anyone tell you that Conservatives don’t care about culture."

That's good enough for me.

Who wants moderation and a socialist culture of dependency? Let us be free from the shackles of subsidy support; let us be celebrate the transfer of lottery funding to prop up the new English Heritage charity. If the Government can redefine our national heritage organisation - let us take inspiration from the Conservative Party and redefine museums in the spirit that our great nation decided at the ballot box on Thursday. 

When I say 'nation' I'm naturally excluding Scotland that believes itself to be a separate country but isn't, Northern Ireland that is a separate country but believes it isn't, Wales that just isn't, and Brighton Pavillion which has gone Green apparently (I suspect conservation issues with metal roofing).

Which blue museum will you be by 2020?

The Healthy Museum
Become part of the NHS 'local' to take advantage of the increased funding (£8bn a year) all you need to do is change the temporary exhibition space into a 24 hour NHS Direct drop in centre (staffed by volunteers obviously!) and guarantee that everyone over 75 will get an appointment the same day for the curator to value their beer mat collections.

The Educational Museum
Lift the cap on student visitor numbers, but make them take SATs on arrival. All exhibitions will include English, maths, science, a language and history or geography, with the new standards organisation Ofmuse unable to award its highest ratings to museums that refuse to display these core subjects.

The Housing Museum
Open your stores to tenants and extend the right-to-buy Giftaid scheme to all museum visitors. First time visitors under the age of 40 to be sold tickets at 20% below the market rate.

The Childcare Museum
Provide 30 hours of free child volunteer activity to working parents of three- and four-year-olds. I suggest getting them to help with documenting the accessioning backlog in the stores.

The Immigration Museum
Instigate new rules so that people will have to be earning income in the UK for a number of years before they can visit your museum and only have exhibitions in English to encourage language integration.

National Security Museum
Don't reduce the size of the regular ex armed services volunteers and offer to take a Trident submarine into your museum as a touring exhibit (optionally site it in Scotland just to annoy the SNP). Don't allow into the museum groups that foment hate (quite a wide constituency if the opinions of my volunteers are anything to go by) and ban from your museum extremist groups (W.I., Family History Societies, NADFAS, etc.).