“But in a time of economic stringency, it is too much to expect a state that must provide hospital beds, school places, police and soldiers to pay for dance ensembles, theatre groups and ‘community projects’,” write Simon Heffer. What’s more, he says, “[too] many second-rate ‘artists’ – be they screenwriters, directors, choreographers, ‘installation artists’ or composers – were enabled to make a living purely because the state chose to subsidise their profoundly second-rate outpourings.”