TimR

No one can afford to buy the house they're living in based on their salary. No one, orher than a few could. I couldn't afford the house I live in now based on my salary at the time. Mainly because of the housing ladder. I bought a very small house in the late nineties on the back of the housing crash. I lived there for 20 years. The equity due to property price rise added to the equity from paying off the mortgage meant I only had to get another mortgage based on my salary. I also have had salary increases due to promotions. People also have inheritances. When you look at people who live in expensive houses you are not seeing the last 20+ years of the work they have done to get there. They're not magically rich people who have suddenly found £500k behind the sofa or are all on £120k a year. There is a danger of labelling house owners as wealthy and taxing them, instead of looking at why companies who are making huge profits are getring away with low pay. And a higher minimum wage doesn't help if it's a blanket measure as it disprotionatly affects small struggling busunesses and disuades them from employing more people. However, there are lots of people living in big houses whose children have left, who are still working and are cash rich. It's disengineous to generalise. The mode salary in the UK is £15k, the median £37k. This means that people on the Mode salaray are living in poverty. Technically anyone with a household income below £22k is living in poverty but most households with 2 incomes will be on 2x£15k. Although I don't know how much tax avoidance affects those below £15k and skews these figures I know plenty of people who only earn £12k a year but seem to have very luxurious lifestyles.

So some people must have a lot of money. Around 64% of households do own a house. Yes. It's unequal and getting worse, possibly. Maybe it gets better as you get older, it should, otherwise what's the point of saving and investing? Ironically if people's earnings were more equal, more people would be below the poverty line as it's a 'relative' measure. Ideally we are all pretty equal when 1 in 3 are in poverty. I guess it depends on your interpretation of my use of 'loads' - that's obviously relative as well. Loads more people are above the poverty line than below it. None of this explains why people are staying at home and spending money on pizza and takeway and watching rubbish TV while surfing the internet.

Look at the disposable income of the groups. https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/

As @tegs07 will probably explain. Produtivity and a nation's wealth depend on people spending money and paying taxes. If people stop spending the money they earn (I don't believe loads of people are poor) then they're not paying the taxes. The government will then have to raise income tax... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8g6kdgzelo The banks will be giving the government statistics on savings.

The world is flooded with mediocrity on Social Media. The bands that know how to use social media get people to their gigs. Sponsored posts targeted at the town you're going to be playing in for a start. Playing loads of gigs of the same material in your local area because band members don't want to travel is not making the most of your band, and having the same bands play the same venues isn't going to make your venue attractive to an audience looking for fresh bands.

In an ideal world mininum wages would be linked to a companies profitability or at least all employees should be guaranteed a bonus based on companies results. No more giving directors and shareholders a preference on dividends.

@BigRedX The Irish governement decided. You applied and if you met certain criteria you were given one of the 2000 trial places. It worked, or at least it reprotedly has worked. It seems to me to just be a shift in 'benefits' to low paid workers, but it does allow them to be productive and examples given show the artists are generating more revenue for other people than they're recieving themselves.

I think we are getting away from my point. Artist Universal Income has been introduced to subsidise artists because attendance has dropped off due to the effects of the pandemic. A lot of my friends play in London. A lot of people would stay around affer work for a meal, a beer and a gig. Now, if you're working from home, its a trip to London after work into London. Only very keen people are going to do that. That's not limited to London, that is going on all over the country.

Normal - what most people do. At one time everyone bought lunch in the works canteen and sat around talking instead of sitting working at their desk eating a sandwich. (Which is also now normal behaviour) Not everyone has to buy lunch every day. It's a numbers game. But if everyone is working from home, no one is buying lunch and all the money is going to the big Supermarkets. Fine, if you all want to sit at home, not spending money and isolated from social interaction, do that. But don't complain that people aren't comming to your gigs, because sitting at home on your own is habbit forming.

That's certainly not normal. 68% of people commute by car amd the average commute time is 28minutes... Figures for September 2025 show lunchtume dining up 5% and up 7% on Fridays. People are slowly coming back.

As far as I can tell, a lot of people in their 50s decided that they don't actually have to work anymore and retired early, and downsized. There are also huge numbers of people injured by the pandemic who mentally and physically cannot work. There are also people working from home - at least one day a week. This reduces income to all the support workers - cleaners, coffee shops, sandwich shops, transport. Evening entertainers and pubs who would busy all week are quiet on Fridays. This ultimately affects the country's productivity. If you can guarantee someone some kind of income regardless of how much work they do, then you move them from being on benefits and they become a productive member of society. People who don't work are a net drain on society. This is the aim of the Artists Universal Benefit, to keep them performing and drag the arts back to where they should be following the pandemic. It needs to be done in conjunctuion with tax breaks to venues, and support for them, until people start coming out of their homes again. Its the tech giants who have manipulated people to be addicted to smart phones that need to be put in check, not only are they making obscene profits, but they're destroying the 'community'.

There is a lot more information here. Essentially it's not a Universal Basic Income scheme. https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-and-sport/campaigns/basic-income-for-the-arts-pilot-scheme/ https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-and-sport/publications/basic-income-for-the-arts-pilot-scheme-your-questions-answered/

Sounds just like a more efficient way of subsidising the Arts. The artists still have to apply for a 'grant', but that effictively cuts out the large, possibly wasteful*, organistations. *Assuming you don't consider the government as a large, wasteful organisation.

Yes. I was just more concerned for their dummer's health...

They all died in horrific on-stage accidents. Just sayin'.