This is an extremely well-made point.  Arts Council money comes directly from taxation, which is paid across the land.  However, any attempt to map "provision" against "contribution" would produce some very red faces amongst the providers.  If a taxpayer in Redruth or Telford or St David's were to ask "well, I have paid my shilling, the same shilling as Londoners pay, so where are my Arts?" it would be very hard to answer that question.

Even with London, ss the cost of housing escalates in London, increasing numbers of people are moving to farther-flung points yet working in the capital - but provision for the Arts in the places where people are now living hasn't reflected this at all.

I'm sure that's true - too often there's a "good enough fer the likes of them" approach to things which happen outside the capital.  However, ensembles and companies based away from London, in centres where it's a point of pride to outdo what happens in London, have succeeded in dislodging the bedrock of such kinds of prejudice.  The CBSO, the Bournemouth and the Halle are the most obvious examples - and in my own little world, WNO and Opera North do work that's on an international level.  Although it belongs more in the discussion about "work done in nonconventional venues", Graham Vick's extraordinary work with City Of Birmingham Opera leads the way, and London has nothing like it at all.

Might there be an issue involving critics here? I've noticed how even in London the critics are less and less willing (or rather, their arts editors are - I realise many of them have their hands tied in this respect) to review concerts that take place outside of the big venues; with respects to non-London concerts, the 'bigness' of the events seems even more paramount. There is a very vague chance that a concert in a smaller venue in London might get reviewed, is there any such chance that would happen in Birmingham or Newcastle or Glasgow (at least a review that would be read nationally, not locally)?

Absolutely agree. I wonder if there are any murmurings about this with respect to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, in light of the greater degree of wider devolved power (well, to some extent) in those places nowadays?

SIR HUMPHREY APPLEBY: "That would be a truly courageous initiative, Prime-Minister!"

PM: "Really?  As bad as that?"

I can tell you've been out of London for a longish while, Richard, because you didn't have the enormous fun of dealing with the "London Residuary Body", and umpteen local councils,  as there is no longer a body that represents London any more.  So each orchestra, opera-theatre, ensemble etc would have to negotiate separately with Brockley, Brent, Camden, Islington, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Ealing, Southall...    

Imagine the programmes you'd get soon:  "The Oboes and Bassoons are kindly funded by Hounslow City Council, not including the Cor Anglais which failed the Equal Opportunity requirements, and is funded by the UK Independence Party.  The French Horns are sponsored by the Institut Francais.  The fagotti are sponsored by Islington... "

In principle it's a great idea, although I am slightly worried by the "stakeholder" elements in it as having a Blairish tinge  What I fear is that the Arts are viewed like Chicken-Licken's pie...  everyone wants a piece, provided it doesn't involve them in any outlay.  As soon as the concert isn't IN Tower Hamlets, then Tower Hamlets won't pay a cent... and indeed, why should they?   But it will spell the end for London's orchestras.  

In case you think I am merely having a laugh here,  I can give you a practical example which will leave you banging your head on the keyboard.  The London Borough of Ealing, where I was living prior to my flit eastwards,  has no Arts Centre of its own.  It has the Town Hall where some amateur G&S is performed to truly execrable standards (although the performers evidently enjoy every moment), and it has the Questor's Theatre (a marvellous institution about which the Borough couldn't give a monkey's).  So.... Ealing set out to raise the funds to build AN ARTS CENTRE FOR EALING, and what a rallying cry that was (come election-time, I mean).  Ten years later, all that exists is a string of broken promises and much bitter finger-pointing.  There never was even a site for it (although the old Ealing Studios film lot sits empty and abandoned - soon to become luxury apartments, 'natch).

But hang on...  take the #65 bus from Ealing Broadway just five stops, and 55 yards outside Ealing's boundary is... the Brentford Waterman's Arts Centre (proprietors: L.B.of Brentford), a superbly-equipped venue with a 350-seat theatre (complete with an orchestra pit), a cinema, another small performance space,  plus a potentially nice caff (if only it were ever, ehem, open...) with balconies outside looking onto the wooded banks of the River Thames.  Idyllic. Perfect.  But it was 55 yards behind enemy lines for the Burghers of Ealing.  I used to cycle there in 12 mins, they had super repertory film programming.  Then they started surcharging non-Brentford residents attending events.

The term "Ealing Comedy" might have been invented for this absurd spat (which still continues a decade later, with the poor ol' Watermans now in a shocking state, it appeared to have closed-down when I last passed by on the bus).

And if that's what the local councils can do for the Arts on a local basis...  imagine the high jinx they could get up to if national funding were devolved to them?   I predict you'd see fewer concerts, and more Mayoral Bentleys.

Note though that your quote from my post reads "the 'regions' (of which London would be one)", ie. I wasn't suggesting for one moment that devolution ought to extend to the level of boroughs. All I'm doing actually is thinking aloud about how to address some of the issues which have come up on this thread.

The basic problem seems to me much more fundamental. Earlier in history, such things as orchestras were paid for by wealthy persons (princes etc.) and institutions (the Church, principally) and the people making the "funding decisions" were the same people who actually wanted the orchestra to exist and who wanted a new symphony by Haydn or whoever every couple of weeks. Now that wealth and cultural literacy are divided in a different way, the funding decisions are no longer taken by people who are or might be interested in the work being produced (I don't know anyone who owns an orchestra), but by government bureaucrats on their behalf, who often seem to behave according to agendas of their own which have little to do with the music or its audience but actually stand between them (your story about Ealing and Brentford is a good example). Removing this "obstacle" would appear to require a more democratic kind of society than the one we have.