Scotland united in curiosity as councils trial universal basic income

Four local authorities tasked with turning utopian fantasy into reality with backing of first minister and multi-party supportUniversal basic income is, according to its many and various supporters, an idea whose time has come. The deceptively simple notion of offering every citizen a regular payment without means testing or requiring them to work for it has backers as disparate as Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Hawking, Caroline Lucas and Richard Branson. Ed Miliband chose the concept to launch his i