No more art for you

The Ministry of Education has announced that it will be discontinuing the project developed by former minister Mailis Reps which would have seen every Year 7, 8 and 9 student in every school in Estonia sent on all-expenses paid excursions to the Hermitage in St Petersburg and the Louvre in Paris out of taxpayers' pockets to get a closer look at the works of art they would only ever otherwise have seen in their textbooks and probably weren't interested in anyway.

A lucky 14 busloads of students and teachers managed to make it to Russia's greatest gallery on field trips costing the state (and by extension you and me our share of) 85,000 kroons each before the ministry decided to axe the programme on the grounds that continuing it would be a waste of money and serve very little point.

Devastated 13, 14 and 15 year olds up and down the country will have to content themselves with Estonia's premier art gallery, Kumu, even if they (or their parents) do have to shoulder the cost of admission. Luckily for them, it's fabulous.