Rumours go that within five minutes of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things winning last year's Booker

Rumours go that within five minutes of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things winning last year's Booker, the printers, Clays, were rushing off a reprint of 20,000 Three days later a second reprint was ordered. They promote interest in a given art form, and give incentives to the practitioners." Awards such as the Smirnoff in fashion - judged by Helena Christensen among others - have offered vital hand- outs, this year giving Elena Zarubina from Russia pounds 10,000 and the opportunity to study at Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design.The impact on sales is also immense. Alan Grieve is chairman of the Jerwood Foundation: "Prizes have an electric factor, a spark about them. The shortlist acts as a sort of selection for the general public, filtered through the media; there's nothing wrong with that. We can't pretend we live in a world in which hype doesn't matter."No one can doubt that there's a lot of philanthropy involved. "If you're hugely busy, working long hours, you need some sort of guide. Of course there are endless injustices, but the prizes breathe life into the system and give a leg up to a lot of younger writers and artists." (Many prizes have age limits.)Dalley sees judges as cultural arbiters, leading the public to the quality needles in the cultural haystack.

Jan Dalley, a former judge of, for example, the Faber, Booker, Encore and Whitbread prizes, says: "There are fantastic benefactors I'm very keen on prizes. It exists for staid, middle- aged people to promote artists they find excitingly rude. Within five years you just know there will be a couple copulating in public."Others remain more idealistic. The Booker Prize is even entertaining the literati to two parties this year: one to commemorate its 30th year, the other to announce the grand prize (pounds 20,000 and instant fame).The niggling question always posed by cynics is whether, say, DH Lawrence would have won the Booker, or even Turner the Turner; there are so many prizes, so the argument goes, that the whole enterprise is devalued. We have no way of knowing if they are a fair reflection of taste and excellence, whether they offer up such dignitaries as the older Prix Goncourt in France, won at different times by Malraux and Proust (the money remains the same as it did in 1903: 50 francs, or about pounds 6.50).GEORGE WALDEN, chairman of Booker judges in 1995, expresses doubts about the abundant prize culture: "The Booker has tried to maintain its standards, but it becomes a problem if you get into the situation we have in schools, where everyone must win something."Prizes like the Turner are totally discredited; it's all hilariously low-grade, provincial, derivative and kitsch. National Poetry Day, on 8 October, offers bards up and down the country their laurels: card manufacturer Simon Elvin sponsors the young poets, Forward Publishing promotes the Forward prizes.

Important judging panels are presently presiding over the entrants for the Whitbread and the Turner. There are prizes for interior design (the Andrew Martin), for fashion (Smirnoff), for crafts (Jerwood's Applied Art). Apart from businesses, there are private foundations such as the Jerwood, sponsoring a variety of awards; its painting prize alone is worth pounds 30,000. The next few weeks are the high season of this prize culture. Tomorrow, the best of the 1,247 artists who entered the Jerwood will go on show. On Thursday the shortlist for the Booker Prize, literary fiction's holy grail, is announced. The following week, another foundation, the Paul Hamlyn, releases the names of its five favourite visual artists at the British Museum.

Figures from ABSA - the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts - show that in the last three years business support for the arts through prizes and awards has risen by pounds 1m to pounds 3.5m; some, like the Creative Britons Award (courtesy of Prudential) offer pounds 200,000 in prize money. "AND THE winner is..." You may hear these words a lot over the next few months. The arts prize season is upon us - and writers, painters and musicians everywhere are hoping that theirs will be the name that pops out of the envelope. Meanwhile, the public has to try to make sense of a cultural scene in which credibility seems to depend more and more on the whim of a judging panel.

Kohl forms his fifth government.8 May 1995: Kohl hosts 50th anniversary gathering of wartime allies in Berlin.Sept 1998: Unemployment in western Germany is just under three million.. Kohl interrupts a trip to Poland to rush home.28 Nov 1989: Kohl announces a surprise 10-point programme to confederate the German states.9 Feb 1990: Kohl pays lightning visit to Moscow and obtains promise from President Mikhail Gorbachev that Soviet Union will not oppose German reunification.1 July 1990: Deutschmark becomes legal tender in E Germany.16 July 1990: Kohl obtains agreement from Gorbachev that united Germany will remain in Nato and Soviet troops will be withdrawn by late 1994.12 Sept 1990: The "2+4" Treaty granting full sovereignty to the united state is signed in Moscow by both German states and the four wartime allies. Mrs Thatcher signs grudgingly.3 Oct 1990: The two Germanys merge at midnight with a huge party at Berlin's Reichstag.2 Dec 1990: Kohl's coalition wins all-German general election.7 Feb 1992: Maastricht treaty sets 1999 as deadline for European monetary union but fails to launch the political union Kohl says is necessary.16 Oct 1994: Coalition wins general election with 10-seat majority. He wants "lateral thinkers" in his government, and supports two of his aides who are under attack for challenging orthodoxy, in the party and the country as a whole.And finally, as he addresses the need for "structural change", an old favourite absent for so long makes an appearance: "I think the Dutch model of job creation can and must function in Germany." The Dutch model prescribes lower wages, part-time work, and the unemployed being kicked off the dole. You don't hear Mr Schroder talk like this in front of of middle-aged workers.That is possibly why Middle Germany is confused, and Mr Schroder's once impregnable lead is eroding But Hamburg's young cinema-goers have no doubt.