Musicians perform near the Houses of Parliament during a protest highlighting their inability to perform live or work during the pandemic. These musicians are facing a different kind of challenge these days. Reuters
Musicians perform near the Houses of Parliament during a protest highlighting their inability to perform live or work during the pandemic. These musicians are facing a different kind of challenge these days. Reuters
Musicians perform near the Houses of Parliament during a protest highlighting their inability to perform live or work during the pandemic. These musicians are facing a different kind of challenge thes
A life without music is unthinkable. For most of us, listening to live music is a delight. That’s why in the UK the Glastonbury festival or the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall are popular highlights of the cultural year.
Covid-19 has brought a halt to our enjoyment, but the success of the vaccination programme rekindles new hope that later this year bands and artistes can begin touring again, jazz clubs and opera houses will re-open and outdoor festivals may eventually resume.
However, there is another threat to music in Britain, and it’s not the virus. It is the government. One music campaigner put it to me: “The British government has given the creative industries of the United Kingdom a No Deal Brexit. It is simply killing us.”
Organisers of Glastonbury Festival have applied to host a two-day family-friendly music event. Unsplash
It’s not just musicians who are worried. Creative industries – films, television, theatre, fashion, dance, art galleries and music – have been at the heart of what is sometimes called Britain’s “soft power” for decades, even centuries.
A friend of mine, for example, is an English theatre designer. She is so talented she is called upon to work in France, Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere on multi-million euro productions. Other groups of friends, musicians, spend every summer touring venues and festivals all over Europe. But the Brexit agreement, more formally known as the “EU-UK Free Trade and Co-operation Agreement” was negotiated in great haste at the insistence of Boris Johnson’s British government, and it is full of holes.
One enormous gap means that Britain’s creative industries face insurmountable bureaucratic restrictions on short-term work for musicians in the EU.
For years this work has been vitally important to artists and performers and also part of the UK’s export success – our cultural brand of excellence. Musicians and creative artists are now desperately campaigning – as one put it – “to shame the British government” into waking up to the damage that they have done.
The Beatles famously learned their craft in the clubs of Hamburg in the 1960s. Getty Images
The Beatles famously learned their craft in the clubs of Hamburg in the 1960s. Since that era, closer European co-operation and freedom of movement within the EU have made it much easier to work across borders – until now. Touring in Europe means packing up electronic equipment, speakers, keyboards and other instruments, light shows, and elaborate staging for a tour that can last a couple of months, crisscrossing borders from France to Greece, Spain to Poland.
But since January this year, Brexit means British musicians have to seek work permits and visas not for the EU as a whole but for each of the countries separately on a tour. Customs officials now require “carnets” – separate documentation for musical equipment. Violinists, for example, may play instruments worth hundreds of thousands of euros and need to move with paperwork valid for a typical tour from Britain to the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy and France, and then back home.
Touring in Europe means packing up electronic equipment, speakers, keyboards and other instruments, light shows, and elaborate staging. The National
Then there is something called “cabotage", drop-off charges for equipment. A Pink Floyd tour would, for example, demand loading truckloads of equipment in London and play in festivals and venues around Europe, loading and unloading the same trucks. But now the new rules mean British trucks have to return to the UK after just two drops – so they visit Paris and Brussels but offload everything or return to the UK before heading to Amsterdam and beyond.
Musicians simply want the opportunity to earn a living, and the Brexit bureaucracy is demoralising, career threatening, time consuming and costly. A new campaign is beginning to demand that the UK government support an industry that is worth billions of pounds in revenues, and does unquantifiable good to the UK’s reputation as the leading live event provider in Europe.
The industry is said to be worth at least £70 billion ($97.6bn) a year and supports 700,000 jobs, mostly freelances. Of course major artists such as Elton John have the resources and support systems to be able to cope with the new bureaucracy. But established musicians also want to help younger musicians – tomorrow’s superstars – who do not have such support.
For most of us, listening to live music is a delight. That’s why the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall is a popular highlight of the cultural year. Chris Christodoulou
It's time politicians stopped treating music as a hobby. It's a truly valuable industry
The British government and EU could, for example, negotiate a visa waiver agreement for 90 days to provide exemptions from work permits for music and theatre. They could agree on flexibility over “cabotage” so that trucks do not have to make wasteful journeys backwards and forwards. But it is difficult to be optimistic when, as one EU official put it, for the UK “the challenge now is … to adjust to the new reality of being outside the EU and its single market".
The simple fact is that the UK government has never admitted the profound damage Brexit is doing to this country. In its first month, January 2021, the country’s exports to the EU fell by an almost unbelievable 40 per cent, yet the government pretends these are merely Brexit teething troubles.
Moreover, musicians are not high on anyone’s political agenda. The UK department involved – Digital Culture, Media and Sport – is a political backwater. But it's time politicians stopped treating music as a hobby. It’s a truly valuable industry.
Gavin Esler is a broadcaster and UK columnist for The National
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180ml extra virgin olive oil; 4 to 5 large cloves of garlic, minced or pureed (or 3 to 4 garlic scapes, roughly chopped); 1 or 2 small hot red chillies, dried (or ¼ teaspoon dried red chilli flakes); 400g raw prawns, deveined, heads removed and tails left intact; a generous splash of sweet chilli vinegar; sea salt flakes for seasoning; a small handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
Method
▶ Heat the oil in a terracotta dish or frying pan. Once the oil is sizzling hot, add the garlic and chilli, stirring continuously for about 10 seconds until golden and aromatic.
▶ Add a splash of sweet chilli vinegar and as it vigorously simmers, releasing perfumed aromas, add the prawns and cook, stirring a few times.
▶ Once the prawns turn pink, after 1 or 2 minutes of cooking, remove from the heat and season with sea salt flakes.
▶ Once the prawns are cool enough to eat, scatter with parsley and serve with small forks or toothpicks as the perfect sharing starter. Finish off with crusty bread to soak up all that flavour-infused olive oil.
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Countdown to Zero exhibition will show how disease can be beaten
Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, an international multimedia exhibition created by the American Museum of National History in collaboration with The Carter Center, will open in Abu Dhabi a month before Reaching the Last Mile.
Opening on October 15 and running until November 15, the free exhibition opens at The Galleria mall on Al Maryah Island, and has already been seen at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023 More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
