some good news. From spring 2022, Ireland will pilot a ‘basic income’ plan for artists, offering weekly, no-strings pay-packets to painters, actors, poets, musicians and anyone else courageous enough for the stop-start, up-down struggle of artistic self-employment. To begin with, a sizeable cohort of 2000 artists will be supported. Criteria for inclusion are not yet clear, though means-testing is out, and random selection may well be the preferred approach – each golden-ticket winner receiving the same, standard subsidy of €325 per week, a financial arrangement that will last, in the first instance, for three years. This ‘basic income’ figure is certainly basic – close to Ireland’s minimum wage. But, in principle at least, the continuing, unthreatened reliability of these weekly deposits is the venture’s salient virtue. Whatever happens during this trial period – failed applications, disastrous auditions, loss-making commissions, sudden evictions – the cheques keep on coming.