THE £324,000 awarded to promote the Lake District's cultural attractions to visitors is to be generally welcomed.

But inevitably there will be those who, in these austere public spending times, question the sense of such a grant.

In particular, it seems a bit ironic to be awarded this cash when Cumbria County Council is planning to shed 1,800 jobs because its government grant is being cut.

Critics might argue that our cultural heritage is already well heralded and such an amount of money would be better spent putting more bobbies on the beat or helping to fund better adult care.

However, that could be countered by the argument that the grant to promote culture is an investment that will eventually reap dividends for the county through increased tourism spend.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of using the public purse for such a promotion, no one is going to say 'no' to the offer.

As can be seen from legacy left by Lakeland poets and children's writers such as Beatrix Potter and Arthur Ransome, culture has long benefitted tourism in the Lake District.

Certainly, the Japanese love affair with the Lakes has come about because they learned about the area at a very young age from Beatrix Potter's books, which are still used by schools to help children learn English.

We will probably never know, but it is possible that there are as many people drawn here because of the literary connections as there are those attracted by the landscape.

We can guess that a significant proportion come thanks to the works of legends like William Wordsworth and Alfred Wainwright and multi-faceted events like the Kendal Mountain Festival - in other words, they are drawn by both landscape and cultural aspects of the Lake District.

The laudable aim of the new cultural grant is allow this dual attractiveness to develop so that even more people appreciate these undoubted assets in equal measure.