Universal basic income (UBI) is often dismissed as unaffordable, unrealistic, or politically impossible. But the conversation I had recently with Howard Reed and Elliott Johnson of the Common Sense Policy Group at Northumbria University left me less sure of that.

The Group's research challenges the Treasury orthodoxy in two important ways:

• Public investment multipliers are far bigger than assumed, and

• Even current spending has a strong multiplier effect, meaning it can pay for itself

And if the economic case for investment is stronger than we’ve been told, then the political question changes too: why aren’t we investing in that case?

We also discussed the Group’s three-tier UBI transition proposal, how it interacts with Universal Credit, and why the security it could supply might be the missing foundation of a functioning economy.

Politics is being recast as dominance: strength, winning, threats, hierarchy. Donald Trump may be the loudest advocate of this worldview, but he is not alone.

In this video, I explain what I call the politics of might — rule by threat, the rejection of restraint, and the treatment of institutions, law and truth as optional. It shapes taxation, welfare, international relations and democracy itself. It legitimises inequality and makes insecurity a tool of control.

I contrast that with the politics of care — not as sentiment, but as the practical recognition of vulnerability and interdependence. Care builds productivity, stability, trust and long-term resilience. It requires accountable democratic government acting to reduce fear, not amplify it.

Ultimately, this is the choice: fear or care, dominance or cooperation, exclusion or inclusion.

And look at our poll, and let us know what you think.

Artificial intelligence is often presented as a growth driver. I argue the opposite risk is emerging.

AI-driven cost-cutting threatens jobs and demand, with the risk of a GDP decline, while shortages of chips, energy, water, and grid capacity threaten higher prices and inflation across the whole economy. Exciting economic policy tools can't resolve either problem.

This video shows why relying on central banks to solve our crises won't work this time, while ignoring unemployment, inequality, and infrastructure will deepen recessionary pressures rather than prevent them.

We like to believe medicine exists solely to heal. History tells a different story.

From slavery to women’s dissent, from homosexuality to neurodivergence, medical authority has repeatedly been used to define resistance as illness and compliance as health.

This video explores how diagnosis has been shaped by power, how difference has been pathologised, and how mental health is increasingly used as a tool of governance in schools, workplaces, welfare systems, and politics.

It argues for a politics of care that treats difference as human variation, not disorder, and asks whether medicine can be reclaimed as a genuinely liberating force rather than an instrument of control.

A growing number of high-paid professionals in the UK are choosing to work fewer hours. Some commentators claim this signals economic weakness, declining productivity, or the consequence of bad tax policy. This video explains why that interpretation is wrong.

When people reach a point of sufficiency, working fewer hours can improve health, well-being, productivity per hour, and the transition into retirement. It can also open opportunities for younger workers, improve skills transfer, and reduce burnout across the economy.

This is not a withdrawal from work. It is a rational response to the scarcity of time, and not money, and it challenges outdated ideas about growth, productivity, and success.

Artificial intelligence is not virtual, clean, or weightless. It has a rapidly escalating physical cost in electricity, water, and emissions—and ordinary people will pay the price.

Research shows that AI data centres could soon consume electricity on the scale of entire nations. At the same time, AI cooling systems are diverting vast quantities of water in a world already facing severe shortages.

This video asks the questions politicians are refusing to confront: who pays for AI’s energy and water use, who profits, and whether unlimited AI growth is compatible with planetary limits, democratic accountability, and basic human needs.

AI may promise growth—but at what cost, and to whom?

The United States is openly threatening to take Greenland, a self-governing territory linked to Denmark and therefore to NATO. That creates a crisis no one planned for. What happens when a NATO member threatens another NATO member?

This video explains why Donald Trump’s claim has no legal basis, how extractive fantasies are driving geopolitical aggression, and why Europe now faces a choice between law and force.

If rules only apply when convenient, they do not apply at all.

But this is not about Greenland alone. It is about whether collective security, international law, and European sovereignty still mean anything. In political economy, this is a massive deal affecting all our futures.

Across the UK and beyond, politicians talk endlessly about affordability — yet nothing improves.

Why?

Because they are blaming inflation when the real issue is structural income extraction. Rent, mortgage interest, utilities, subscriptions, fees, and financial add-ons are permanently draining household income, leaving people with no real choice over how they live.

In this video, I explain how weakened regulation, captured competition policy, and financialisation created a system designed to extract income, and why mainstream politics refuses to confront it.

Affordability is collapsing by design. That is why politicians won’t talk honestly about it.