The BBC’s annual ‘Children in Need’ charity appeal took place in the UK on Friday 15 November raising an estimated £31 million GBP on the day, a 19% increase on last year’s record breaking £26 million.
This is quite astonishing given the huge international aid effort that has galvanised the UK this past week in response to the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan. Additionally the UK Prime Minister David Cameron is in a bitter political fight with his opposite number regarding spiralling energy costs (amongst plenty of others) squeezing beleaguered households. While the UK general public has a reputation for generosity in helping others deal with adversity, the size of the increase generated through the BBC’s appeal surely suggests people have more money in their pockets than was previously credited.
Mehdi Hasan, has a column in the New Statesman 25th October 2013 which proposes an audacious plan to put even more disposable income in the UK public’s purses with the intention of fast tracking the economic recovery. Mehdi points out that by the Bank of England’s own reckoning 40% of the £375bn GBP created through quantitative easing (QE) has gone to the richest 5% of households with the rest remaining with the banks and so doing very little to help the recovery.
Picking up on an idea from Steve Keen, a professor of economics at the University of Western Sydney, Mehdi makes a convincing case for QEP (quantitative easing for the people). That involves paying the £375bn directly to every single UK citizen. This would result in each and every one of us receiving £6000 cash to spend as we please putting the money straight into the economy rather than allowing it to be buried deep in a bank vault. It’s an exciting prospect and with less than six weeks to go until Christmas there surely isn’t a better time to do it.
