Theft isn’t the only problem facing the cash-strapped British Museum – and I have some answers | Simon Jenkins

The museum’s sprawling collections should be consolidated, with items sold to fund much-needed developments

Museums are essentially phoney. Few of their objects were made for them but rather to be owned, used, enjoyed and traded. They were not meant to be wrenched from their context by fair means or foul, then put in a glass case or buried in giant state hoards, most of them never again to see the light of day.

The British Museum is such a beloved institution that no one ever asks what it is about...