Clearly the government does not believe artists and writers deserve to earn a living from their work, as it is dismantling the apparatus for them to do so. Cultural vandalism, we all knew they were waiting for the moment to do it and now they have. Apart from via petitions and organisations like ALCS, or the Writers' Guild, how are we individuals to make this point clearly enough that the Government is forced to listen? Even though thousands protest it seems to make no difference to their 'we have a mandate' attitude. I am thoroughly disgusted by this situation.

It might be old fashioned Marxist prejudice, but isn't a Tory government traditionally better served by an ill-educated population? Deter them from attending university, allow their bookshops and libraries to close, discourage them from writing and being read, and they won't know any better than to vote for us again? It's worked for several centuries already, don't be surprised to see it sneaking back in here. We're all in it together remember.... together in ignorance.

Strontium Labrador, thank you for your comments but I'm not claiming that this is the "only" reason people have ever voted Conservative. There's several other reasons - duplicity, innate stupidity, coercion, alphabetical order, nicer colours etc. All I asked was "isn't a Tory government traditionally better served by an ill-educated population", the answer to which traditionally is "yes".

In those days - the good old days, we like to call them - we were happy because we were poor, but at least we had bread on't table because we had jobs down the pits etc. We couldn't read, but we had a job.

The mistake Shady Dave is making is that they can't lead us into ignorance with one hand and not pay us back with jobs with the other. We will resort to riot and strike - as indeed we are doing. If we are to be expected to keep quiet and let them get on with "things", then the least they can do is give us some books to read, let us have some nice quiet places where we can go to read them for free, encourage a few more of us to write new ones once in a while, and pay us when we do eh? Otherwise, hell in a handcart beckons.

@Tim I agree with you to some extent. As a publisher I do keep reminding authors that they can register for this, and they do keep forgetting. Thanks to this article I put it on Facebook as I have a large number of authors and publishers in my following.

It's in the public domain but we do forget.I wonder if there's some way of keeping it more in the view of authors - some way of displaying it very publicly.

I suppose it could help if we (publishers) registered the authors, but they may well want control of that, and authors do move between publishers so it's probably more efficient if they register all their titles. We could get them up and running with it for their first book, or if they aren't already registered.

But it's not that easy to register, or for a publisher to register an author anyway. You have to print out the form and send the usual ID documents, and these can only be sent by the author. I agree it's up to the publisher to keep reminding authors though, and to help them through it with links to the website and info.

Refreshing comments Tim .

How could it NOT be the publisher [who acts for the author in all matters commercial relating to publication], who registers the work for PLR ?Surely this is their responsibility just as it is in obtaining an ISBN ,and registering a publication with the British Library ?.

Same with commercial royalties Adele. Some authors publish all over the place . If the publisher is inefficient then the author will eventually move anyway .