by Andre Coelho | Feb 2, 2020 | News
Basic Income Hub is organizing an event in which Peter Sloman will present his new book “Transfer State: The Idea of a Guaranteed Income and the Politics of Redistribution in Modern Britain“, together with Barb Jacobson and Michael Pugh. Barb is a Director at Basic Income UK and has been a prominent basic income activist for many years and Michael Pugh is the Co-Founder and Director of the Basic Income Hub, a new initiative powered by Compass.
The event will happen on the 17th of February, at Compass, 81a Endell Street WC2H 9DX London, from 6 to 8 pm. Registration can be done here.
by Toru Yamamori | Feb 4, 2016 | News
David Jenkins, ‘Is It Time For London To Try Basic Income?‘, Londonist, 31st December 2015.
David Jenkins, a political theorist, argues that ‘[a]n idea like Unconditional Basic Income might seem radical, but its growing popularity represents the recognition that the old strategies are no longer up to muster and that serious, fresh new thinking for the future is required’.
by Vito Laterza | Dec 15, 2015 | News
A debate on universal basic income will be hosted on December 17, 2015 by the London-based RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce; also known as the Royal Society of Arts).
EVENT: The Case for a Universal Basic Income.
TIME & DATE: Starts at 1pm (UK time), Thursday, December 17, 2015.
VENUE: Durham Street Auditorium, RSA House, London, United Kingdom.
SPEAKERS:
Anthony Painter, RSA director of policy and strategy;
Frances Coppola, writer and commentator on banking, finance and economics;
Tom Clark, writer and editor for the Guardian;
Ben Southwood, head of research, Adam Smith Institute.
EVENT DESCRIPTION:
In the last year, discussion about the possibility and desirability of a basic income – a weekly payment for every citizen – has become more audible.
From Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to Mayors in Canada and the Netherlands to campaigners in Switzerland and leading thinkers such as Thomas Piketty, winner of the FT book of the year Martin Ford, and anti-poverty sage Tony Atkinson, the idea has been gathering interest.
In recent days, news that the Finnish government is committing to one of the boldest universal income experiments thus far, has generated an intense fresh round of commentary and debate.
The RSA has been undertaking research into the idea for the past year and at this event Anthony Painter, the RSA’s Director of Policy and Strategy, will present our latest thinking.
Is it feasible? Should we do it? Join the debate.
MORE INFORMATION: +44 (0)20 7451 6868; rsa.events@rsa.org.uk; see also the event page here.
BOOKINGS: Click here to book online.
LISTEN LIVE here beginning 1pm on December 17, 2015.
by Stanislas Jourdan | Nov 22, 2015 | News
Next December 3rd, Basic Income UK will be hosting a conversation with Brian Eno, David Graeber, and Frances Coppola. The discussion will be facilitated by Becca Kirkpatrick from Unison.
Brian Eno is a musician, composer, record producer, singer, and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music. He recently spoke about basic income during his John Peel Lecture on Radio 6.
David Graeber is an American anthropologist and anarchist activist, perhaps best known for his 2011 volume Debt: the first 5000 years. He is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
Frances Coppola worked in banks for 17 years. She is now a musician and teacher, who writes on economics, finance and banking at Piera, Forbes and her own blog Coppola Comment.
Fond out the details of the event on Meetup.com
by Will Wachtmeister | Sep 26, 2015 | Opinion
A society in which people work only because they have to have money is no better than slavery.
The black-and-white wildposters carrying this message are one of a large number of basic income sheets which artist-campaigner Russell Shaw Higgs has been pasting all over his part of London, Hackney. Another one argues that if people are intrinsically of value, they have the right to survive without working. Yet another quotes Martin Luther King: “the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly”.
Paste-ups in London (photo: Russell Shaw Higgs)
The paste-ups contain no web address, no logo, no signature. No call to action, except for some which encourage you to google “Basic Income” for more information. The posters carry just the substantial message, the core argument. They’re a street-art fragment of a conversation in a public space, and very effective at conveying a message. That’s why so many people use printers in London to print similar posters to display in public view. London has always been a hot-spot for these sorts of things – walk down any road and you’ll see dozens of stickers and posters on doors and streetlights shouting similar messages of support or dissent for political policies. When Higgs emails me from Athens, where he’s spontaneously absconded, he says he makes no distinction between his personal life, his art and his political activism. Reading his emails makes it clear what he means. Higgs combines a coherence of thought with acts that are as much about self-expression as they are about campaigning.
“I remember in my very first hour here thinking, it is as though Athenian citizens feel a passionate need to communicate on every available inch of outdoor wall space,” says Higgs. “It’s almost like wandering through a physical manifestation of the Internet.”
The “profoundly social space” of the streets of Athens is contrasted with London as a metropolis “dominated by corporate advertising, CCTV, Public Order Acts, and the general, ever creeping privatisation of our commons”.
Higgs naturally believes that Greeks in particular should be granted Unconditional Basic Income. This is not only because they have been singled out for “a whole special kind of brutal punishment by international bureaucrats and banker racketeers, with undemocratic global corporations hovering in the shadows” but also because “we owe Greece such an immense cultural debt”.
Higgs is used to making the case for UBI. Earlier this year, he stood in the UK general election, contesting the parliamentary seat for Hackney South. Seeing it primarily as an opportunity to promote ideas, Higgs’ campaign literature found its way to 62,000 households. His main causes were UBI, compassion and sortition: the random lottery selection of political officials, as – partially – practiced in ancient Athenian democracy.
Russell Shaw Higgs’ election leaflet
Higgs and the Green Party candidate were the two candidates promoting Basic Income and by chance they were always seated alphabetically next to each other at the hustings as they confronted the rigidity of the establishment parties.
“The trouble with most career politicians is that they are programmed to habitually distort and mutate their thoughts and words, to fit the narrow and unimaginative limitations of their party policies,” says Higgs. “However, in 2015 it is certainly my impression that a large number of people are at least now familiar with the idea of a UBI. Probably the most common question asked now, tends to be around how a Basic Income would be financed.”
In the winter of 2000-2001 Higgs participated in a number of naked protests, attracting “much coy media and friendly public attention” with a simple yet radical action. Higgs spent a month continuously unclothed: he was remanded naked in his segregation cell in Brixton Prison, he also appeared naked in court in front of the judge and jury, until ultimately being found not guilty of any misconduct.
“Basic Income and Non-criminalised clothing-optional living are both very simple and straightforward rational concepts that would subsequently bring about profound changes to human consciousness and our attitudes towards one another,” Higgs says. “They are both concepts that value autonomy and that undermine archaic authoritarian hierarchies and deeply embedded power structures. Both concepts place high value on simply Being Human.”
A year later Higgs got himself his first iMac and home internet connection. He became an intensive blogger and soon discovered Basic Income. Like many UBI supporters, the fundamental liberation for Higgs would be to “uncouple work from money once and for all” and to begin valuing human lives, not humans as slaves.
“I find it appalling that most people’s lives are fundamentally dominated by (wage) slavery and the corrupt propaganda, from cradle to grave, that results in people colluding in their own slavery, backed up by the false notion that it is all about ‘morality'”.
Paste-up designed by Russell Shaw Higgs
Higgs says that growing support on the left as well as the right gives him hope. He says people are crying out for new ideas and solutions and that many can see that the old ways of organising society are desperately in need of being revised. The challenge is overcoming apathy and the “accumulative drip-drip poison and negativity propagated daily by mainstream media and so called ‘leaders'”.
“I believe very strongly that ideas shouldn’t just collect dust on our bookshelves, nor only take up mind and discussion space. Ideas are to be actively practiced, tried out and experimented with in our daily lives,” Higgs says but adds: “The stresses and distractions of full time wage slavery makes that near impossible. And probably deliberately so.”
To read the entire Q&A click here. To view a collection of Russell Shaw Higgs’ UBI work on Flickr click here.
Will Wachtmeister, “Being human: Q&A with the artist behind the London UBI posters” Personal interview, September 26, 2015.
