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Monday 16 March 2020

We need a basic income now.


Well, things are getting worse.  Looking at the data available, the government have moved to more strict recommendations. This states that if you live with others and you or one of them have symptoms of coronavirus, then all household members must stay at home and not leave the house for 14 days. The 14-day period starts from the day when the first person in the house became ill.


Those who live alone (like my brothers) only have to self isolate for a week.  But for those with children, this essentially means that parents will be at home an awful lot, especially for those with younger ones who naturally pick up lots of infections.


I understand that this is important in slowing the spread of this infection, but this will mean that many will be confined to being at home and that means that they will not be able to earn money to pay bills, or buy food.


And it will mean that many NHS workers will be at home as they are not to be tested as the UK does not seem to have enough testing kits.  And the reason that I suspect the government has not realised this is because they do not have enough mothers involved in making these decisions.


If social distancing is to work, we cannot have a system where people have to work when infected with COVID19 to feed themselves and loved ones.  And that means that we need a sytem of universal/basic income and we need it now.