FOR more years than many people care to remember Swindon was called a cultural ghost town. Nothing, according to its critics, ever happened here.

Then Swindon Arts came along and began to put an admirable gloss on the town's dreary old image.

But now this valuable body is being killed by the council's financial axe-wielders all for the want of £140,000 which would keep it afloat for another year.

The Advertiser is well aware that the borough's essential services are beset by huge financial problems because of the way in which the Government allocates local authority funding. But we believe this cut is sending out the wrong message.

It is all very well for Coun Seteve Allsopp (Lab, Parks) to say that Swindon Arts is not the body to see through a cultural lift-off.

But this town has been waiting for years for the new library, concert hall and art gallery that, he appears to believe, will be made possible by what he calls entrepreneurial regeneration of the town centre.

In the meantime Swindon Arts has been putting the town on the map and showing outsiders that we are not all culture-starved philistines.

Following this decision, where next might the axe fall: the town's district libraries, Swindon Dance, the Arts Centre?

This is not merely a question of entertainment. This issue concerns the heart of a town that has been sneered at for too long.