We:

• Care for relatives.
• Staff charity shops.
• Staff National Trust and other properties.
• Staff art galleries, visitor attractions and other cultural assets.
• Sing in choirs.
• Put on plays and operettas.
• Play in orchestras and bands.
• Make electronic music together.
• Watch each other’s performances.
• Pick litter.
• Teach people how to repair things.
• Run food banks.
• Foster children and animals.
• Run marathons and other challenges to raise money for charities.
• Visit other people who are less fortunate than we are.
• Run Scout, Guide, Brownie and other groups for children.
• Staff thousands of charitable ventures.
• Protest unfairness.
• Restore hedges, stone walls, habitats, as well as railways, canals, pumping stations and old vehicles.
• Grow things in gardens and allotments, often sharing produce and know-how with others.
• Bake cakes for church fetes, coffee mornings and Country Markets.
• Make quilts and blankets for premature babies, teens leaving care and people in hospital.
• Help our children out with DIY, bills and childcare.
• Write poetry, fiction, non-fiction.
• Talk to interesting people, sometimes in public.
• Run small businesses for pleasure rather than pure profit.
• Keep cruise companies, caravan parks, libraries, charity shops and seaside towns going.
• Plus, judging by the adverts I see, nostalgia brands, mobility companies, supplement manufacturers and the life assurance industry.

This by no means exhaustive list is what people do when they no longer have to worry about merely keeping themselves alive.

We make culture, communities, society. The things that really matter. The oil that keeps the ‘real’ economy working. Free, gratis and for nothing.

Rather than force us into a workhouse, perhaps you should be demanding more of the above for yourselves?