Plockton Traditional Music Centre under threat

There's an online petition to attempt to save the Plockton National Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music : it's at http://www.gopetition.com/petition/42495.html and I urge you to sign it before the 10th February.

To quote from the petition site:

The Highland Council has targeted the National Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music, based at Plockton High School, in its proposed cuts package. http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2115087

If the cuts are voted through at the Highland Council meeting on February 10, the Centre could close as soon as July next year. Director Dougie Pincock was interviewed on the BBC [ ... ] and said that while he expected the Centre to take its share of any cuts he 'hadn't anticipated it would be all of it.'

Plockton has been an integral part of Scottish Traditional Music for the past 10 years. It has started many of our best young musicians on the road to their career and provided training in traditional music and groupwork from some of Scotland's finest musicians. Our young folk could not have gained this level of training anywhere else.

We've been to Plockton more than once, have friends in the region, and know at first hand of the excellent work that the Plockton Centre do, both in terms of encouraging traditional musicians, and in the wider economic and cultural benefits of the Centre to the area.

Any fule kno that Cameron is just Thatcher in a Bullingdon Club boater, and that the ConDems would be slashing at the welfare state and any form of non-elitish arts provision even without being able to blame it on the bankers. Destroying the National Centre in Plockton fits in perfectly with this agenda of course, and the loss would not even register in the world view of our beloved leaders.

Oh, and, of course, the time for bankers' remorse is past, apparently.

So, please, sign the petition - close down the ConDems, not the National Centre!