Money for nothing

Niall McCrae

Dec 01, 2025

British people are glum and grumbling after Rachel Reeves’ budget, but what did they expect? They should know by now that government is an extortion racket.

While many voters regret their decision in last year’s general election, die-hard Labour supporters continue to make excuses: Tory mismanagement and Brexit ruined the economy. Daily Mail readers, meanwhile, have been told that the budget has taken from hard-working families to give to benefit claimants. This is exactly what the powers-that-be want people to believe, not only as the old divide-and-rule strategy, but because society needs to understand that jobs are disappearing rapidly, and the future is basic universal income and total dependence on the state.

The looming technocracy has no use for the majority of the workforce. Data and distribution centres will be run by robots. Artificial intelligence will rise through the occupational strata to replace professional practitioners such as lawyers and doctors.

Call it new technology

And they use it to burn

And they show no concern

Work for their prosperity

While the big wheels turn

Now it’s too late to learn

Don’t upset the teacher

Though we know he lied to you

Don’t upset the preacher

He’s gonna close his eyes for you

And it’s a shame

That you’re so afraid

Just a worker waiting in the pouring rain

Putting back the pieces of a broken dream

Father worked in industry

Now the work has moved on

And the factory’s gone

See them sell your history

Where once you were strong

And you used to belong

There was once a future

For a working man

There was once a lifetime

For a skillful hand – yesterday

Prophetic words by the band Erasure, back in 1987. But most people do not heed the warnings, preferring to shoot the messenger.

A talented OffGuardian writer, Todd Hayen, has decided to stop writing due to the abusive responses to his latest article on the persistent faith of citizens in government and in official narratives. He used the term ‘sheep’ for the easily herded folk who take the vaccines and believe in the scripted saviours and bogeymen.

Funny how the same people can be utterly convinced that their own pet catastrophes—Trump returning to power, climate change, systemic racism, white supremacy, overpopulation, or the rise of the far right—are existential threats that will end life as we know it unless we surrender every freedom immediately to stop them. But mention digital id, central bank digital currencies, vaccine passports, social credit systems, or the creeping transhumanist agenda, and suddenly you’re the paranoid one wearing a tinfoil hat.

The threats to humanity are – or at least should be – emphatically clear. A digital prison is being built around us, with the implicit consent of the ‘sheep’, who still think that technology will solve our problems. Convenience, security and efficiency are prized over meaningful social interaction, privacy and freedom. As Hayen explained, this delusion was primed long ago: -

Most of them have been psychologically and educationally groomed for decades to believe that socialism, Marxism, or outright communism are not only benign but morally superior. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ sounds noble when you’ve never watched the state decide what your needs actually are. They think communism is free healthcare, student-debt forgiveness, and government UBI cheques. They have no idea it’s secret police at 3 a.m., neighbours denouncing neighbours for extra bread rations, gulags, re-education camps, forced confessions, and a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

I am no less against global corporate capitalism and fascism as I am of leftist totalitarianism, but merely a minority of critical thinkers see through the Left versus Right paradigm. Ask a progressive liberal student whether she’d expect a fascist government to give free money to everyone in society, of whatever colour or creed, and she’d probably scoff at such a ridiculous notion. Welfare is a thing of the Left – that’s how younger generations are taught to love Big Brother.

Britons are led to believe that the government will always be there as a safety net, when the jobs are gone. Therefore, they don’t threaten an uprising on the throwing of taxpayers’ money at Ukraine or on the perpetual influx – a million every year – of immigrants whose cheap labour will be a temporary pursuit.

The budget is misunderstood by the majority as a giveaway to the workshy. It is really setting the scene for digitally-controlled UBI, and everything else is a sideshow. Or as Erasure called it, ‘The Circus’.

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