You might logically conclude from this that there has been a definite change in our cultural priorities, and that it has been for the worst. But if you watched Bragg's recent three-part TV series Class and Culture, you would have gathered that you were wrong. For culture now, it was claimed, has never been healthier, more ubiquitous or more accessible. It has become such a mass pursuit it has even managed to bypass, if not make obsolete, the British class system.

We now define ourselves just as much by what we do in our leisure time, wrote Bragg in the Daily Telegraph at the start of the series. "How would you really describe yourself?" he asked. "I suggest it might be through the type of music you like, the sport you follow, the radio station you listen to, the authors you read, the ballet or opera you go to, the soaps or galleries—or a mix of all. The old snakeskin of class falls away when we look at what we really do, or are given half the chance to be as we really want to be."

This all sounds very nice; to disagree or demur immediately makes one a mean-spirited pessimist. But such a conclusion seriously misinterprets the circumstances as they exist in Britain now.

On the face of it, the visibility of the arts, certainly when treated as a branch of the entertainment industry, appears great. You only have to consider the wall of print that comes at you from Thursday onwards every week: the listings, the supplements, the mounds and mounds of fearlessly uncritical coverage. Despite their practitioners' regular complaints about being ignored or unvalued, the arts are treated with a level of media sycophancy which a politician or a royal could only dream of. Those who cover them have essentially become their promoters; there is no criticism, only approval. The greatly increased dominance of the media by the metropolitan branch of the middle class has also led to an unchallenged assumption that everybody is in thrall to The Wire, or knows who Carlos Acosta is.