As Kathy Marks discovered, a proposal to reduce the age of consent is meeting vitriolic opposition on the island. The young men seated around a table in Dix-Neuf, a stylish brasserie in St Peter Port, the Guernsey capital, appear the height of respectability. Mark Fisher’s speech strongly suggests that they have no intention of discouraging the introduction of admission charges”However, Alan Borg, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which does charge, said: “Every survey shows the majority of museum visitors comes from the ABC1 social category and tourists. To give them free admission amounts to a subsidy for the middle classes and well-off.”.

Gay rights have erupted on to the political agenda in Guernsey, where homosexuality is still an unpalatable subject and sex is illegal between men under 21. The Government believes that all members of the community should be able to enjoy our great national museums and galleries: they should be for the many, not just the few.”David Barrie, director of the National Art Collections Fund, said: “Despite its earlier promises, it now looks as if the government has performed a U-turn. It is not crass commercialism to say we can do better in these areas,” he said to some gasps from the audience.
Mr Fisher was addressing a conference organised by the Museums and Galleries’ Commission. He added, to the consternation of his audience, that museums and galleries should make money by “exploiting retail space” and learning lessons “from Harvey Nicholls, Marks and Spencer and Tesco. I thought the new government was feeling more kindly towards European solutions, but this is in the opposite direction.”. The Government yesterday signalled a U-turn on demanding free admission to national museums. A stunned conference of museum directors heard Mark Fisher, the arts minister, say he now had to consider the success of the National Galleries on Merseyside which has introduced charges with concessions for young people and had an increase in visitor numbers.

“We can’t dilly dally any more.”This dismayed Ritt Bjerregaard, the EU’s environment commissioner, who was also speaking at the conference Afterwards, she said: “I was very surprised. Very few consumers recognise the labels.“We’ve tried harder than any other country to make it work,” environment minister Michael Meacher told a conference on ecolabels yesterday. Now the Government would consider setting up a British ecolabel, making a decision in the next few months. Companies which felt their products did the minimum of environmental damage in manufacture, use and disposal, were invited to apply for the label. A panel of experts, government-appointed, would set the “green” criteria for different types of products, then decide which brands qualified.The scheme is widely perceived as a failure.