English National Opera to cut 10% of staff

The English National Opera has announced it will cut 10% of its staff - about 45 jobs - to ensure the company is "artistically and financially viable in the long term". Bosses there say they fear the company's Arts Council funding (which covers about two thirds of its costs) will be cut because the government isn't planning on increasing the amount of money it gives to the arts funder. Techie union BECTU has said it will strongly fight the cuts though, to be fair, the opera sector does generally vastly overspend, so ENO's cuts are possibly quite sensible. And while I don't necessarily agree with the government moving money away from arts funding to fill the big fat hole in their disastrous Olympic budgets (which is arguably why government arts funding is threatened), I've never been entirely sure spending large sums of tax payers money on opera was that justified either. Even with good operas.