There’s much worse content, but nothing worse for acquisition of knowledge and wisdom.
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She is an unusually articulate person - I would have liked to hear “the Tory”'s answers.
IIRC there were no “answers” just a repeat of the Tory mantra diatribe. Just another useless piece of sh*t from the Tory front bench 
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Of course. The civil servants that really get things done, not the politicians, saw ahead 2 or 3 decades ago and set up a universal credit - and it’s even called ‘Universal Credit’.
They knew that this was all a very large number of people would have.
I think the right-wing argument for UBI has 2 bases:
- The fear of the wealthy and privileged that at some point automation will reduce the number of wage earners to the point where there is no market for the products made by their machines (there is serious economic theory, and the odd science fiction story, predicting that for capitalism to survive people will have to be paid to consume rather than produce).
- It will enable governments to do away with public services altogether - since everybody will be given a state ‘wage’ they can buy everything from the private sector.
Universal Basic Income is not the same as Universal Credit, by the way - the idea is that it’s not means tested - everybody gets the same amount.
Universal basic income is something paid to every adult individual regardless of employment status. It’s been temporarily tested in a few places, but not rolled out to a whole nation yet AFAIK.
It may be slowly percolating through that having all levels of society able to afford to buy stuff and have a reasonable quality of life, keeps them, the klept, in a state of wealth. Rather than grinding the masses down to bare survival.
Wealth creation depends on the movement of money. The cost of living crisis has turned off the taps. Businesses of all sizes are tanking. The ultra rich are well-cushioned against it I suppose. But they’re not completely untouchable.
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Excess deaths are up in a lot of countries, especially cardiac related which is one reason why Pfizers bivalant booster is being looked into.
Many of us here are wise old owls with underpinning of some kind.Possibly a nest egg or properties in UK…or elsewhere. Perhaps we can survive but what happens to those people in UK who have not planned for the future or even envisaged that their future could be clouded. How much help is available to people in this situation?
The NHS is no longer there with its safety net to help,
I take it you mean the people who weren’t able to plan for the future ,because of crap jobs and faith in a system that has let them down .
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I mean the people who would need help from social services and perhaps from employers who have not rewarded them adequately for their work. Not every one has family who can or will take them in to sleep on the sofa. This is a kindness of the past.
What do these people do?
Some voted for the Tories and brexit without a second thought.
What is the answer?
In the short term, oust the govt then hope the new lot restructure the system.
I’m not very optimistic, whoever is in power.
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Neither am I.
The UK probably had the best chance of that in some wider sense with the old boy with the red rosette, but they didn’t vote him in so now they’ve just got a a slightly younger bloke with a red rosette who is a virtual carbon copy of the bloke with with the blue rosette 
Rosette in the English sense of course, although having some Charcuterie pinned to their chest would be perhaps an appropriate signifier of what unserious clowns both the current blue and red blokes are.
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Doesn’t have to be the vaccine though does it? Covid screws with your body in all sorts of interesting ways and very few in the UK have escapeed at least one infection.
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They let the bodies pile high, as Blojo decreed.
I’m half hoping Starmer is merely feigning in order to get his bum in the seat, but I’m not sure.
Commenting on Starmer’s apparent support for Sunak’s blocking of the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill, the Scottish Greens equalities spokesperson, Maggie Chapman, said yesterday:
Under his short tenure, Starmer has ditched almost every policy that Labour members elected him on. Whether it is his new-found support for Brexit, his U-turns on public ownership or his hostility to devolution, it is clear that he cannot be trusted.
Some take the view that the very fact that Starmer said one thing to get elected as leader, and has since said almost the opposite on almost every issue, is evidence that he’s now capable of dissembling to curtail the media attacks, which he thinks is the only way to get elected PM - and that he will turn out to be a progressive in office.
And there is some truth to the claim that Biden has been more progressive in office than he presented himself when campaigning.
My own view is much more cynical, I’m afraid. I fear UK conservatives, media and establishment have undermined standards in public life, especially honesty, to such an extent that the whole Westminster bubble is infected, and Starmer is merely another symptom of the disease.
Of course the Greens say that: the Act was largely their barmy idea! The Bill could have drafted it so there was no conflict with UK-wide legislation - and so that its provisions were within what the law allows - but they didn’t.
I suspect they did this less to support trans people than to use them to support their desire for independence. “Look at what the UK is doing: it’s stopping us making our own laws!”