We must ask ourselves what we are trying to achieve by educating in the arts. Are we growing recital-bots, who store Western culture's greatest hits on some internal Dictaphone, to be replayed on request at interviews and after-dinner appearances? Probably. But no culture swot is complete without a Fellini to his Flaubert. He just doesn't know it yet.
The rise of the ebook is crucial to the emerging success of Indie Authors. By cutting out the middlemen - agents, publishers, traditional bookshops - authors can realise better returns and connect more directly with their readers. Most notable, of course, is the phenomenon of E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey - now the best-selling book in British history.
Does it take a controversy for an Indie novel to become a bestseller in today's crowded electronic era? Of course if your novel is provocative enough, and both the above are extremely so, it will rub many the wrong way, sufficiently enough to generate that much-needed word-of-mouth buzz, which any marketer worth his/her salt will tell you is invaluable.
The collapse of the ministerial careers of Davis and Fox show the stark influence Cameron's reshuffle will have. Lyndon Johnson once said of J. Edgar Hoover that 'it's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in'. Giving an increased number of new MPs a stake in the coalition government's future looks set to be the wisest feature of this upcoming reshuffle.