I refer to the Malaysiakini report Philharmonic Orchestra: The sound of wastage .

The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) issue is not an easy one to criticise less one is accused of being a music and culture Philistine. And for the record, my eclectic taste in music does include Holst, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Mozart et al.

But perhaps, one way of looking at it is by comparing it with Indian carnatic music and bharathanatyam dance.

This type of dance and music is much older than Western classic music by at least a thousand years, and it is a highly developed and sophisticated art enjoyed by several hundred million Indians and their diaspora. But nowhere in the Western hemisphere, or for the matter anywhere outside India, is this art form subsidised, year in, year out, to the tune of some RM30 million per year, by any government or semi-government body, as Petronas does with the MPO, where almost 100% of the musicians are foreigners. What the capital and annual maintenance cost of the auditorium is is anybody's guess, since it is bound to be blacked out under the Official Secrets Act (OSA).

So, what gives with MPO subsidy by Petronas? Has that man-for-all-seasons and people (just dumped by London voters) Red Ken Livingstone ever suggested in his 20-odd year tenure as the mayor of London, that dikir barat , Mak Yong , Malay dance and Malaysian culture be given an airing at the South Bank or at the Royal Albert Hall in London bank-rolled by British GLCs?

Tourist go and see the MPO because it is there, not that they have ever threatened a UN- sponsored international boycott and an embargo on KL if they could not relax to the strains of Beethoven and Bach whilst washing down their satay and durian dodol with Tiger Beer (sad is it not that Anchor is a poor, second cousin, nowadays!) or perhaps it is caviar with Chianti, Beaujolais, Chateau Lafitte and Dom Perignon.

When will we stop imitating our neighbours across the Causeway who today are totally confused as to whether the have their own unique culture, or, if they have evolved into some foreign outpost of London, New York and Paris. Or, perhaps, of Vienna.

When is the Malaysian government ever going to get its priorities right? We spend RM1.2 billion to buy Russian warplanes that will never be used (because no one is going to invade us anytime soon) so as to be condescendingly allowed (read as conned) to sponsor a space tourist, at the additional cost to us of only another paltry RM40 million. What next, ‘Buy 20, Free1?

But we cannot afford to give scholarships and bursaries to some who are less equal than others but who score 10A1's in the SPM examination? Cannot or will not?

When did we surrender and hock our national identity and collective conscience to Messrs. Elgar, Chopin and Tchaikovsky?

The least Petronas could do is to put a gun to the heads of the London, Paris, Vienna, Munich and Moscow symphony orchestras and get them to underwrite the MPO’s bill.