The Bristol "Free Money" Mirage: A Study in Political Gaslighting.
Okay. Will it be the escalation panel meeting to see if the £14m bin lorry deal gets overturned, or the specific "unused sites" the Citizens for Culture panel panel wants to turn into 'creative hubs'?
Look, sit down. Take a load off. You ever notice how the language changes when the people in charge want to rob you? They don’t call it “taking your money” anymore. No, no. They call it “revenue enhancement.” They don’t call it “cutting services.” It is a “transformation programme.”
And now, here in Bristol, they’ve come up with a new one: Universal Basic Income.
Think about those words. “Universal.” That means everyone, right? The whole galaxy. The milkman, the person who fixes the sewers, the billionaire with the yacht. Everyone gets a slice. But then you look at the fine print. The Bristol Greens—God bless their organic, hemp-knitted hearts—voted for a “universal” trial that only goes to two groups: creatives and care leavers.
Wait a minute. If it is only for “creatives,” it is not universal, is it? It is a club. It is a fan club for people who make interpretive dance videos about the climate. It is a sector-specific grant with a fancy, academic hat on.
And who is going to pay for it? Well, they’re sending a letter to the government. A letter! “Dear Santa, please send five million pounds so we can pay people to paint murals of bicycles.” The government already said no. But they voted on it anyway. They spent an entire Tuesday afternoon voting on a letter they knew was going into a shredder in London.
The Great Arts Shell Game
While they’re busy daydreaming about “income floors,” have you looked at what they’re doing to the floor we actually have? The Greens are talking up UBI for “artists” while simultaneously signing the death warrant for the Cultural Investment Programme (CIP).
This isn’t some abstract theory; it is a £635,000 cut that is going to gut the lifeblood of this city. We’re talking about core organisations being told to “scale back” or disappear because the council won’t bridge a funding gap.
Here is the “hit list”—the 26 organisations that actually keep the city’s heart beating, currently facing a phased reduction and total closure of funding by 2027:
St Pauls Carnival and Bristol Pride: Our flagship celebrations of identity and community.
Tobacco Factory Theatres and Bristol Old Vic: The literal stages of the city.
Watershed and Spike Island: Where the actual innovation happens.
Knowle West Media Centre and Trinity Community Arts: The ones doing the heavy lifting in the parts of Bristol the Greens only visit during election month.
Travelling Light Theatre Company: Bringing stories to Barton Hill kids who won’t ever see a “creative sector” UBI cheque.
Asian Arts Agency, Circomedia, Paraorchestra, and Rising Arts Agency: The diverse voices they claim to champion while they’re reaching for the scissors.
It’s the ultimate political hustle: promise the “creatives” a futuristic utopia where the cheques just arrive in the post, while you’re busy turning off the lights at the local community centre today. For every £1 the city invests in these groups, we get £88 back in economic impact. So, naturally, the “geniuses” in City Hall decided that is the first thing to cut.
The council claims they are commissioning a “Cultural Strategy” for Spring 2026. “Strategy” is just political code for “we have no money but we’ve hired a consultant to tell us how to feel about it.” They are spending £4,500 on “Creative Engagement Commissions” to talk about the future while the present is being liquidated.
The Legal War: When “Consultation” Becomes a Court Case.
Now, the people who actually do the work—the actors, the set designers, the ones who aren’t sitting in ivory towers—are fighting back. Equity, the union for performing arts, has already staged rallies at College Green. They aren’t just holding placards; they’re looking at the law.
Remember the SEND funding scandal? The High Court already ruled that Bristol City Council acted unlawfully when it tried to slash £5 million from the Special Educational Needs budget because they failed to consult the people affected. Well, guess what? The arts community is reading the same law books.
If the council tries to axe the CIP without a “meaningful” consultation—which is a legal term for “actually listening to people before you rob them”—they could find themselves back in the High Court faster than you can say “judicial review.” The union is already calling these cuts “short-sighted and unnecessary,” pointing out that £635,000 is a rounding error in a £20.8 million deficit. They’re effectively spending more on the lawyers to defend the cuts than they’d save by just keeping the theatres open.
The “Philanthropic” Mirage and Developer Shakedowns
But wait, the Greens have a plan! They’ve started talking about a new “Philanthropic Culture Fund.” Sounds classy, doesn’t it? Like something a monocle-wearing billionaire would set up. But when you peel back the sticker, it’s just a new way to shake down developers.
The plan is to use the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL)—that’s the tax developers pay when they build a block of flats—and funnel it into this new fund. They’re also looking for “philanthropic foundations” to chip in. They even gave £100,000 to a “Citizens for Culture” panel (funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation) to decide how to spend money they haven’t actually collected yet.
It is a “hybrid approach,” which is just council-speak for “we’re making it up as we go along.” They’re asking developers to pay for the arts while simultaneously making it harder and more expensive to build anything in the city. It is a closed loop of nonsense. They cut the public funding that works, replace it with a private fund that doesn’t exist yet, and then spend the difference on consultants to “reimagine sustainability.”
The Lib Dem “Halve the Bills” Alternative.
Even the opposition is getting in on the act, but at least their maths is in the right century. The Lib Dems have come out swinging against the UBI trial, calling it what it is: a discriminatory handout that ignores the person cleaning the toilets to pay the person painting the cubicle.
Their alternative? Guaranteed Basic Income. Instead of giving money to everyone (including the rich) and hoping the taxman claws it back, they want to focus on the people actually drowning. They’re pushing a plan to “halve energy bills in a decade” by breaking the link between gas and electricity prices. It’s still a long-shot “Dear Government” letter, but at least it doesn’t pretend that a poet needs a cheque more than a pensioner who can’t afford to turn the heating on.
The 20-Second Spending Spree.
While you’re worrying about your 4.99% Council Tax hike—the absolute legal maximum they can squeeze out of you—have you seen how they handle the money once they have it?
Just a few days ago, the environment committee got so rattled because they were outvoted on their plan to pick up your rubbish once every three weeks—which, let’s face it, is just a fancy way of saying “let the rats handle it”—that they rushed through a £13.8 million spending deal for new bin lorries in 20 seconds. Twenty seconds! You take longer to decide what kind of cheese you want at the deli, and these people just spent fourteen million of your pounds between two sips of water. Labour called it “absurd,” and they have now called the decision in to an escalation panel set for Thursday, 22 January. They’re right to be furious. It was a total collapse of democratic oversight. When the Greens lose a vote on policy, they seem to lose their minds on the budget.
Institutional Self-Interest and the Death of Purpose.
The Green Party adopted UBI in 1973. That’s over fifty years of carrying around a policy like a lucky charm. They aren’t proposing it now because it is feasible; they’re proposing it because they are desperate. They have no practical ideas for the £20.8 million black hole in the current budget, so they retreat to the comfort of a 1970s dream.
It is institutional self-interest at its finest. They need to keep their core voters—the “creatives”—from noticing that they are the ones wielding the axe. By voting for a UBI trial they know will never happen, they get to keep their “progressive” credentials while behaving like every other bean-counting administration once they get through the doors of City Hall.
The Systematic Pattern of Failure.
Initially, you might think this is just incompetence. You might think they just don’t understand how Universal Credit works—that if you give a care leaver an extra £500, the DWP will just take it back out of their other pocket. But it isn’t just incompetence. It is a systematic pattern.
Look at the libraries. They claim to be “protecting” them. But they’ve moved £330,000 for books from the revenue budget to capital borrowing. That is like paying for your groceries with a payday loan. It looks fine on the receipt today, but the interest is going to eat your house tomorrow.
They are addicted to the “symbolic win.” They want the headline that says “Bristol Votes for Free Money,” not the one that says “Bristol Fails to Fix Child Poverty.”
The Verdict.
It’s the Emotional Dysentery of politics. They do what feels good. It feels good to talk about UBI. It feels good to talk about “supporting creatives.” It doesn’t feel good to talk about the fact that your city is the 4th most dangerous place in England for “public order” or that the crime rate is 138.6 per 1,000 people—that is 51% higher than the national average.
They’re addicted to failure. They see a policy crash and burn in Finland or Canada and they think, “Hey, we haven’t tried that disaster yet! Fetch the stationery!”
You’re being gaslit. They’re pointing at the sky telling you there’s a “safety net” coming, while they’re busy removing the actual ground from beneath your feet. It’s not a utopia, folks. It’s just a very expensive distraction while the house is on fire.
If you’re one of the 26 arts organisations on that list, don’t hold your breath for the UBI cheque. The Greens haven’t forgotten you; they’ve just decided that a letter to the government is a cheaper way to say “goodbye” than actually funding your work.