Yes, essential items…like food. This verbiage could have come from a business plan or some other document no one is expected to read. But this was a quote provided to a newspaper so here we are.
What if — instead of failed schemes like the derisory “eat out to help out” — HM Government simply gave its hungry citizens money…money they wouldn’t keep, wouldn’t hoard or send offshore but would spend on those essentials the anodyne Mr Goodacre mentions above. Anyone who has any experience in the real world of economics, which excludes most of HM Government or the US congress, money at that level doesn’t have owners, only spenders ( © Omar Devone Little). Any money you give to the people mentioned in the article will be in someone else’s account, some store’s till, within 24 hours.
Not like I expect Labour to pick up this ball and run with it but maybe after they get in, they can start a scheme like this for the neglected cities of the north and elsewhere.