Blog

Natalie was five years old when her grandmother broke some unfortunate news to her. “My grandmother told me I couldn’t have a bicycle because she did not think it was ladylike. ‘That’s not fair’, I thought, and that was my introduction to politics.” Children are free of the social-conditioning-goggles through which many adults view the world, so such double standards are starkly nonsensical to them. The indignation that five year old Natalie felt about the Great Bike Injustice formed the cornerstone to her personal and political beliefs, later solidifying into feminist values. In Natalie’s eyes, Universal Basic Income is a profoundly feminist project for many reasons. An example of how a Universal Basic Income system serves feminism more favourably than the existing benefits system is the difference in their underpinning values.

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Natalie was five years old when her grandmother broke some unfortunate news to her. “My grandmother told me I couldn’t have a bicycle because she did not think it was ladylike. ‘That’s not fair’, I thought, and that was my introduction to politics.” Children are free of the social-conditioning-goggles through which many adults view the world, so such double standards are starkly nonsensical to them. The indignation that five year old Natalie felt about the Great Bike Injustice formed the cornerstone to her personal and political beliefs, later solidifying into feminist values. In Natalie’s eyes, Universal Basic Income is a profoundly feminist project for many reasons. An example of how a Universal Basic Income system serves feminism more favourably than the existing benefits system is the difference in their underpinning values.

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Josien Piek is a macroeconomist, the area of economics dedicated to grappling with money on a global, international scale. To people outside the world of high finance, the whole business can seem sterile, impenetrably technical, almost a beast unto itself that relentlessly churns away without us. Josien brings some warm-blooded humanity into discussion of the global numbers game. “My professional life has always been all about money, and I think money and energy are the same. Money and love are actually very comparable in our western world.”

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Jonathan Williams is unusual in several dimensions. His career trajectory is one you could feasibly call meteoric, an American Dream bootstraps story if you like; equally unusual is his continued dedication to equality and fairness, values that many people lose when they cross class lines. 

Abject poverty looms large in the places touched by Thatcherism, and Jonathan’s original home is one of those places. He got involved with unions when an employer handled his personal difficulties badly, demanding that he returned to work after a bereavement without giving him the time he needed. 

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The first impression that Alison gives is one of an extremely sharp, passionate woman.  During our conversation it clarifies that her expertise lies in combining political intelligence and interpersonal intelligence, pushing on metaphorical doors until there’s some give. Her love for the concept of UBI makes for a powerful current. 

“I love it. I just found it really interesting and I really like the community, the people. It's just something that I feel really propelled forward to do, something within me that wants to manifest itself. It wants to happen.” There’s a great sense of possibility and potential, and excitement to see what happens next. 

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Everyone designing the project suspected, from long experience, that a money first approach would be effective. But still, nobody guessed quite how effective - or that within the year, Clean Slate’s fifteen staff members would become fifty three, that this project would go from supporting 20 people to nearly 1,100 across Wales and England - or that, in the midst of a global pandemic, it would generate over £1.3 million in additional income for some of the most vulnerable households in the UK.

Here is the story of how that ‘Money First’ programme worked, what the outcomes were - and what the lessons it contains for a sector facing a cost-of-living crisis.

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UBI pilots enable us to explore the possible impacts of unconditional cash on our lives. UBI+ goes one step further.

The potential for a UBI to provide people with the security and freedom to say no – to step away from exploitative relations and ‘bullshit jobs’ – creates a different relationship with time. It allows us to re-imagine not just the world of work, but the ways we define ourselves and relate to each other. It makes it possible to reconsider, from the ground up, what constitutes a valuable use of our time.

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On the 12th of May 2022, the UBI Network launched UBI Food, its 41st Lab, with a virtual event focused on “What role could a Universal Basic Income play in ensuring nutritious and sustainable diets for all?”

Dan Crossley of the NGO Food Ethics Council, UK, hosted a panel of experts, including Professor Elaine Power, Dr Elizabeth Kimani-Murage and Dr Sara Closs-Davies. They led a rich discussion that contended with the relationship a basic income has with nutritious and sustainable diets

Three key questions were discussed:
(a) how UBI can address food insecurity?;
(b) how does a UBI fit into the right to food? and;
(c) how can a UBI be financed?

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The last few years have seen an upsurge in pilots of universal basic income (UBI). While all pilots aim to test the same basic concept of UBI, they vary considerably in their methods and focus. For proposers of new UBI pilots, this can lead to a bewildering array of technical characteristics to consider: sample size, target groups, sampling methods, geographical area and more. However, before deciding on the details of pilot design, there is the prior question: what is the fundamental purpose of the pilot?

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Low fruit and vegetable consumption is an important issue, with evidence to suggest that it’s associated with an increased risk of a range of chronic diseases. Most people in England are consistently eating less than the daily recommended amount of fruit and veg. There are many environmental, sociodemographic and personal factors that affect fruit and veg consumption, and many of these factors disproportionately affect people living in areas of high deprivation. The National Food Strategy for England provided a series of recommendations for how to increase fruit and veg consumption across the country.

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A staggering 2.4 billion people globally are food insecure. Individuals and households across food systems, from farm to fork, can’t afford nutritious food even though there’s a worldwide surplus. Our food systems are clearly not delivering for everybody. Amid calls for food system equity, and the fact that people who are currently earning their livelihoods in food systems are among the most economically vulnerable, the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit was held to kickstart system transformation as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

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We need your help.

After the success of our Mayoral, Welsh and Scottish pledge campaigns last year, we're once again asking candidates standing for election across the UK to support UBI trials.

On 5 May voters in England, Wales, and Scotland will pick who they want to run their local services, and voters in Northern Ireland will choose their new executive.

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Food insecurity is the awareness that food is going to be a struggle today. It is also the awareness that accessing food tomorrow and in the future may also be a struggle. At an individual and household level, food insecurity highlights issues of access, income, and social exclusion. Mid-year figures from the UK’s national network of food banks, the Trussell Trust, show that food bank use by September 2021 hit 935,749 people. But this is just one part of the picture.

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Northern Ireland seems to be at a crossroads. The fragile peace of our society secured by the Good Friday Agreement seems like nothing more than a political football to be kicked around by our political leaders, both in Stormont and in Westminster. As we emerge from the fallout of the pandemic, and with continuing political tensions over Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol, there’s a need for calm heads and sensible policymaking to diffuse these growing tensions. All of this is set against a backdrop of an upcoming Assembly election in May – arguably the most important Assembly election since devolution was established in 1998.

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“Imagine waking up tomorrow, all music has disappeared. All musical instruments, all forms of recorded music gone. … What is more, you cannot even remember what music sounded like or how it was made. You can only remember how important it had been to you and your civilisation. And you long to hear it once more.” ~ Bill Drummond

No Music Day was a project instigated by Bill Drummond that ran from 2005 to 2009. Some interpreted the event as an attack on music, an attempt to remove it from public life. But this is the opposite of what Drummond intended.

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As the idea of UBI continues to gather support among the public, attention is turning to specifics such as what level a UBI would be set at and how it would be financed. But alongside this discussion of design and implementation, another term is increasingly being heard: ‘Minimum Income Guarantee’ (or alternatives such as ‘Guaranteed Minimum Income’ or ‘Guaranteed Income’).

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The impact of Covid-19 has changed the way many of us view the world. And this has given us an opportunity to think about how we could do things differently.

Lockdown has meant that a lot of us have not been able to go to work, which has had a big effect on our daily lives.

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The UBI Lab Network and Basic Income UK are working together on the #PledgeForUBI.

We're asking candidates in the Hartlepool byelection to back Universal Basic Income pilots.

If you're a candidate, you can sign the pledge by emailing us.

If you're a supporter of a political party, ask your candidate to sign using the hashtag #PledgeForUBI.

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