Universal Credit should be a safety net, not a punishment for being poor
The idea that people on benefits aren’t trying hard enough to find work feels like a tired old trope. Most people want to be employed and contributing, not stuck relying on the state. Instead of making the process more punitive, we should be asking why so many people are in this situation in the first place. Is it lack of skills, caring responsibilities, mental health issues, or just a complete failure of the job market in certain areas?
If we want to help people get back into work, we need to invest in actual support. That means funding good quality retraining programs, providing accessible childcare, and offering genuine one-on-one guidance from people who aren’t just trying to hit targets. Tying payments to some vague notion of "activity" just sounds like another way to cut costs by making life harder for the most vulnerable, and it’ll end up creating more bureaucracy, not less.
Tax the billionaires who own our media
I think we should introduce a new tax on billionaire media owners to fund independent journalism and community-led arts projects. This is needed because right now a handful of rich people have way too much control over the stories that get told and the information we have access to. It's not exactly a secret that media ownership is ridiculously concentrated, and this has real consequences for our democracy.
We've all seen how certain newspapers and outlets will push a particular agenda or smear certain politicians, and it's usually the ones who challenge the status quo who get targeted. By taxing these billionaire owners, we could raise money to support independent media outlets and community-led arts projects that actually reflect the diversity of our society.
Honestly, the student debt crisis is a joke. It’s time we just made university free and stopped pretending it's fair.
It makes me so angry that we're still talking about student debt like it's some kind of personal choice or investment. It's not. It's a massive financial burden that hangs over us for decades, forcing people to pick careers based on potential earnings just to pay it off, not on what they're passionate about or what society actually needs. I know people who are genuinely putting off starting families or buying homes because of it, and it feels like the government just expects us to be grateful for the privilege of being in crippling debt.
This whole system is just another way to reinforce existing inequalities. If you're from a wealthier background, you might not even need a loan, or your parents can help you out.
Scrap Tuition Fees Already
What's the point of having a supposedly free education system if you're just going to saddle students with a load of debt the minute they graduate, I mean it's not like we're made of money or anything. My proposal is to scrap tuition fees altogether, it's not like it's a radical idea or anything, plenty of other countries manage it.
The current system is just a way of pricing out working class kids from getting a degree, and that's not exactly what I'd call fair. If we want to create a more equal society then we need to start by making education accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford it. It's not like the government can't afford it, they just choose to spend their money on other things, like subsidizing big businesses or whatever.
I know some people will say that scrapping tuition fees will just mean that taxpayers will have to foot the bill, but I think that's a pretty short-sighted view.
What do you think?
Vote on individual policies, adapt them, or write your own alternative. Good ideas should be tested.