Closing welfare-state free time is killing British cultural production.

Evidence

What we have seen with the coalition government is the systematic shutting down of space where time could be used differently. This has a massive impact on culture, because it was within those spaces that any alternative culture could be produced. Many of the key developments in popular culture since the 1960s were facilitated by the space provided by the welfare state, social housing, etc. They amounted to a kind of indirect funding for cultural production. With those spaces closed down, much of the culture of late-capitalist Britain is moribund, miserable, repetitious and homogenous. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1670