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The weather was kind but the outlook for the Latitude Festival and all our arts could be decidedly frosty in future.

If the expected 30% cuts to the arts budget go ahead, many a small company will surely face ruin and our flagship touring companies will find delivering that increasingly onerous.

So this weekend might mark the end of the ballet, opera and Shakespeare companies appearing at in Suffolk.

"I think an increase in lottery funding will match the loss of government subsidy," claims Therese Coffey, the new Suffolk Coastal MP (Con), on her first visit to the festival.

Its organiser, Melvin Benn, who also backs Leeds, Reading and part of Glastonbury Festivals, doesn't think the idea of philanthropy will work here in the way it funds the arts in America.

"People like me are taxed so much more heavily - there's corporation tax and personal tax, and they keep on going up and up," he says.

"I do think we need to think about the kind of tax concessions that are the foundation for giving in America," Therese Coffey concedes.

She is a newly-appointed member of the Culture Select Committee and will be following all matters arty in future.

Mr Benn, meanwhile, was happy with the blue skies overhead for now and not worrying too much yet, about storm clouds in the future.

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