I keep reading articles about how tax credits won’t apply to third or subsequent children born after a particular date (April 2017). It follows this part of George Osborne’s emergency budget speech. Families who have a third or subsequent child after April 2017 will not receive additional Tax Credit or UC support for this child. […]
Welfare reform: the moral and practical case for basic income.
May 6, 2015 By 4 Comments
In the run up to this general election, there’s been a lot of time spent debating welfare, welfare reform, spending and so on. The received wisdom is that benefits need to be cut/ capped/ people must work, either for their benefits (workfare) or in paid apprenticeships. So we have sanctions, where if you don’t comply […]
Why Clacton gives me hope.
October 10, 2014 By Leave a Comment
The one on inequality, basic income and anger.
April 21, 2014 By 10 Comments
Source: Oxfam. Seriously. 5 families are wealthier than 12.6 MILLION people put together. Does this strike you as a good idea? And it appears that the welfare state created after the second world war, to even out the chances of all of society, to provide health care, actual affordable housing instead of Affordable Housing™1 and […]
Basic income is something for nothing – why does anyone deserve that?
March 15, 2014 By 16 Comments
Click on the image to see other posts in this series One of the (many) criticisms levelled at the concept of basic income is that no one deserves something for nothing. And yet an unconditional basic income is precisely that – something for everyone without anything in return. Why would we want to do that? […]
Basic income – the case against it.
March 7, 2014 By 12 Comments
Click on the image to see other posts in this series There are various criticisms levelled at the basic income whenever it is proposed, not least that it’s unaffordable. I’ve given some suggestions on that in the past, but today I want to look at what other people raise as faults in the system. One […]
Could the basic income actually save us money?
February 14, 2014 By 28 Comments
When I wrote on the basic income a little while back, one of the criticisms levelled at it was that we can’t possibly afford it. I think this is misunderstanding the suggested principle and also what the knock on effects of it would be. Another criticism is that people would abuse it – they’d just […]
Basic income – a solution to welfare?
January 14, 2014 By 41 Comments
If you follow me on twitter, you may have caught me sharing posts about Basic income over the last couple of days. Most notably a petition to the European Union which closes today. The petition is to investigate basic income, not to actual start it, but it’s the first step, and one that I increasingly […]
Food bank debate – political point scoring and nothing changes.
December 19, 2013 By 21 Comments
Yesterday MPs met in the house of commons to debate foodbanks, following a petition raised by Ms Jack Monroe. Or did they? Let’s read the actual motion. That this House notes that the number of people using foodbanks provided by the Trussell Trust alone has increased from 41,000 in 2010 to more than 500,000 since […]
