Hello,

I am very driven by creativity.  I was chatting to a friend about blogs, and he asked if it were possible to make money out of a blog.  I replied “no”, I mean you’d have to have celebrity status and get paid for interviews, that is the only way I see.  But I guess I am a little cynical, as I have been a creative sort for some time and it seems that the cost of creativity is more than what can be earned from it.

I recently acted in a short film, and I am very pleased with the result.  But again it seems that if I wish to break into this I will have to spend many years in poverty and work for free.  Everyone expects a free lunch, and I got one on each day of the shoot; but when I got home I did not have financial security.  Oh I’m not blaming the film makers, they are just doing what they do.  I am blaming this culture of gaining exposure from giving your creative skills for free.  It is true that in this system, that this is the case, but it does not have to be.

If we were all provided with a universal unconditional basic income for everyone, with no questions asked and with out the need to work; I would work.  I would work to supplement my income and my hobbies, it would not matter whether I made it in order to be an artist.  The competition of this so called democracy would cease to be there and I would be able to truly be myself.  We are getting poorer and they are getting richer.  I can’t afford freedom anymore.

Even when I worked as a professional my money was tight.  Remember the gaff when Labour took away the 10% tax band; that hit me hard, and since then the tories have also been withering away at my earning with such great ideas as the bedroom tax.  The call for a universal basic unconditional income is a revolutionary idea, because it would change the very nature of how we live.  I don’t know the in’s and out’s of the costs, but I am pretty sure that there are many ways in which to raise the money that would be a lot fairer than the current system of taxing the poor to breaking point.

I am digressing from the point of this, to talk about my creative output.  But this is the point, my art is my life and the need of money for sustenance is essential.  I am not asking for the world to support me, I work and like I said I would continue to if I was supplied with an unconditional living wage.  There are a lot of very fat cats, who are eating all the pie, all I’m asking them to do is make it possible for all people in Europe to have a decent standard of living regardless of whether they take part in the competitive ethos so many can not see beyond.

These are ludic principles and although I do not know much about them, I am no intellectual; I can understand the importance of these principles in creating a fair new world.  A bit like the world that Charlie Chaplin talked about in the world’s greatest ever speech, but more centred on happiness rather than being cogs in a wheel of a system that is all consuming of this world and is resources.

x

Unwelcome Human