Culture Minister Michael Russell has made public the cost of establishing Creative Scotland in a marriage of Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council. He has given assurances that the £3.3 million total will come from Government and will not be deducted from the funding allocated to grant aiding of the creative arts in Scotland.

A third of the the £3.3 million cost will go to paying for voluntary redundancies.

The Minister says that this figure of £3.3 million is comprehensively and rigorously inclusive and is the most accurate possible estimate of the establishment costs involved.

The ultimate logic of a unified arts organisation working in a single building has been sidelined for financial reasons.

This decision avoids the public outcry that would be generated in the usual way by the two ferrets that are the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen, keen to avoid  sharing a sack. They could reliably count on the support of opposition parties looking for political advantage.

The decision also avoids the inevitable turf wars between Edinburgh and Glasgow on the location of an arts and creative industries HQ.

However this model for the immediate future of the new body cannot possibly have other than a negative impact on cohesion.

The single advantage of a delay in bringing the components of Creative Scotland together – under one inevitable atrium – would be to take the opportunity to generate public debate on the role of the arts and of the creative industries in today’s Scotland.

The result of this might define the nature and purpose of a building to take forward the new unified development body.

The arts and the creative industries have a symbiotic relationship but are quite distinct entities. There would be a positive benefit from the public airing of issues of where, why and to what end state funding should be applied within the spectrum they present.

There are sacred cows grazing in expensively nurtured fields which might well grow better crops or feed more productive stock. The world of the arts is one as full of vociferous vested interest as any other. The notion that it is fuelled by altruism is as naive as it is misplaced.

Scotland could take the lead in a radical reconceiving of this entire aspect of contemporary society. It would be noisy, bloody and vengeful but there is a time to start over and harden oneself to the difficulties.

This is a better time than any imaginable, with the basis for a new philosophy already laid in the coming of Creative Scotland. Michael Russell has made it clear that this is non-negotiable. As he described it, the train has left the platform.

This was an initiative begun by the previous Labour-led administration. Its value was recognised in its retention by the new Scottish Government which was big enough and discriminating enough to stand above trashing everything it inherited.

But this is a minority administration and real politique dictates that in such circumstances one chooses one’s battles carefully. The sinple fact about the arts is that there’s litte perceived return on the investment of sitting out the inevitable row over any root and branch rethinking.

So it would be a fool who would bet on it happening.

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