System disc upgrade Xubuntu 12.10>14.04LTS System will recognise GTK mouse theme package in Settings>Mouse and Touchpad>Theme Cursor remains default main cursor, auxiliary cursors in non GTK produced windows. Logout/login cycle and reboot cycle do not repair. update-alternatives does not list additional themes. Other user on (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2220420) reports bare metal install provides correct function.
Possible duplicate of https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7415 Fixed in Xubuntu 14.10, the problem was actually caused by lightdm-gtk-greeter. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm-gtk-greeter/+bug/1024482 Marking as INVALID since the greeter was to blame.