It's Another Exciting Round Of 'Guess The Redacted 'Guardian' Headline'..!

People are eating their pets? Children are starving in the streets? Mothers are selling themselves on street corners to buy bread?

*sighs*

Many in Lydon’s generation went to university or art school without paying anything; others had their fees heavily subsidised by the state.

No, Alex. By the taxpayer.  

Budgets for local drama and public art projects were far more generous. Beneath all this was the safety net of full employment, dole and affordable housing. These conditions made postwar Britain an ideal breeding ground for confident and adventurous new forms of art...

Until we ran out of money... 

It is not necessarily a question of increasing government funding for creative initiatives, welcome though that would be.

Perish the thought! 

Instead, we need to think at the deepest level about what it takes for a society to be able to regenerate itself and allow the new to be born. Just as the declining birthrate among younger Britons seems far more likely to be due to a hostile social environment than any sudden change in attitudes to parenting, so too we need to look at the fundamental inability of our society to provide basic forms of security – in education, housing, welfare and employment – if we are to understand why it is now so difficult for young innovators in all the arts to achieve breakthrough.

That's not independence. That's being kept. As a pet.