Dear Richi Sunak

Asda.
Honestly they must have saved me thousands over the years!

On the offchance this is real

GLASSES
Go to Asda! I'm serious. I don't know how much my glasses would be elsewhere. 20 years ago they were £400 from vision express. Cheaper but still expensive from Specsavers. Asda look at your prescription then give you the add ons you need for free. That's for astigmatisms, variofocals, very high lenses etc. I got 2 pairs for £120, but they do far cheaper as well.

SOLAR PANEL
This is obviously ridiculous, and make me wonder about the rest of your post. Your solar panel that has been going for decades can power a device that either wasn't invented at the time, or is powered by a connector that wasn't invented. Absent a time machine, you are not powering a phone via a decades old anything!

Rishi is an absolute idiotic and completely out of touch, but you are making about as much sense as he is at the moment.

Some of us have complex eye issues. I can't just buy a cheap £10 pair of glasses. I have nystagmus in one eye. The glass has to be thicker in that lense then the other. Plus other issues. I am sure OP is allowed to moan.

My prescription glasses cost about £300 as well. Due to the high prescription, the lenses have to be thinned out. This costs a lot of money. They are still not completely thinned out as the prescription is so high

@TuesdayWhistler LOVING the use of chinny reckon! With accompanying hand gesture I hope?

I will be voting Tory - not because I like them, but because they are promising things that will affect me positively (tax cuts, raising stamp duty limit) and Labour's policies will affect me negatively (VAT on private schools). Plus, Labour is a party with deeply rooted antisemitism. Also, Starmer has always been and continues to be completely incompetent.

And incidentally, have a peek into any school workroom, many teachers will have eft their school shoes under their desks, so as not to wear them out on the journey too and from school. More than half in my staff workroom, certainly.

I imagine the vast majority of them have been left there because more comfortable shoes are worn until they get in to school, rather than poverty. Everyone used to have 'commuting shoes' in offices too.

Not everywhere.
In our area there are at least 3 'commuinity pantries' where can get food on an honesty basis, no referral needed.
And a couple more where can pay £2 per bag and fill up to 5 carrier bags, so a full shop for a tenner.

Oh do give up, I’ve met teachers who couldn’t even spell my son’s name correctly when writing home about him. Hardly the most important part of the post.

the Tories have absolutely decimated the education system in our country.

This is what confused me.
OP, as an experienced teacher, you must be on around £40,000?
Not a fortune, but to state that you can't afford a £10 prescription charge, especially as your children are grown up and no dependents?

We lived on my husbands £40,000 salary in outer London for 3 years whilst our children were little and I took time off with them by choice, with no benefits apart from the £20 a week child benefit, as a family of 4 buying formula nappies baby clothes etc.

Where do people live the bus fare is capped at £2? It certainly isn't in South Wales.

Rishi is in his 40s so sky was probably a couple of hundred pounds to sign up and around £10 a month subscription fee when he was in school
He really is so out of touch.

Do you know how food banks work? You can't just rock up at one and ask for food. You need to have a referral slip either from SS, MH team, GP or similar. I cannot see a scenario under which the OP would fit the criteria for the food bank voucher.

A teacher of 30 years should know that the UK PM is in fact Rishi Sunak and not Richi

Apologies should have said things I wish I could have had.

He was pressed about things he couldn't have as a child. I think as the media like to do they have spun it out of context to make it sound like he was complaining....

A child cannot help the circumstances they are born into.

I had a black and white tv and was grateful for it. If I was asked for things I could have had I may have mentioned more tv channels. Honestly I wouldn't think more of it.

It's amazing what politics does to people. The media spin on things, politicians having cement and milkshake thrown on them. Also people on the internet saying they can't afford £9.90 for a prescription but they can afford over £300 for glasses......

I don't know how you expected people to sympathise. I know many teachers who have a single income home. They are very comfortable and not pleading poverty. Perhaps you need to review your finances.

I would discourage using out of date medication but I'm sure you already know that.....

Teaching is good money what are you spending your money on?

On the basis of the original post, I'd guess that it's adjectives

The ‘sacrifices’ you are making and have made are very much your choice. It does sound rather Dickensian for a middle class teacher to be existing in such a frugal way. Rishi Sunak doesn’t belong to the worlds’ of ordinary people. I’m assuming he was grappling desperately for something to say that indicated some sort of ‘poverty’ and got it massively wrong; but then you would if you’re a billionaire married to a billionaire 🤷‍♀️

I quit teaching and took a 12k pay drop, I can still afford shoes, prescriptions ans sky. Teaching is good money what are you spending your money on? I hope this doesn't make you reel too much.

but you do seem to share their total ignorance of the normal lives of normal people all around you

the people around me, me duck, are actually hard up and living on a social housing estate.
The hardest up people in society.
Actual, real, true and proper poverty.

Not hyperbolic nonsense invented by someone who describes them self as "middle class, comfortably off"