To be absolutely sick of hearing about the cost of living crisis

Norhing to do with Labour and i have said upthread, our household income is less than £60k.
But go ahead with your assumptions.

I don't think that will be something exclusive to Waitrose shoppers!

We didn't.

Ah, the old 'you don't know what else they've got going on' is such a convenient retort, isn't it?
Are you saying i should say there, there, it's the COL crisis not you' to a pp claiming she had no spare cash on a £10 pcm (gross) income? Come on!

Ah, the old 'you don't know what else they've got going on' is such a convenient retort, isn't it?
Are you saying i should say there, there, it's the COL crisis not you' to a pp claiming she had no spare cash on a £10 pcm (gross) income? Come on!

I surely can't be the only person sick to death of hearing about the cost of living crisis?
I am tired of reporters interviewing middle-class (usually) mothers inside paid activities such as soft play and hearing them moan about how they are struggling to make ends meet.
Have we completely lost the ability to cut our cloth according to our means or does 'struggling' now mean carrying on spending as usual then complaining when there's no money left?
There have never been as many massive new cars on the road, towns are full of hairdressers, nail bars, brow bars, tanning salons, soft play, play cafes, coffee shops, ice cream parlours, dog groomers, most of which didn't exist 25 years ago and are probably the recipients of the money of the families who say they can't keep up with spiralling costs.
Yes, some families will have been hard up before prices started to go up and will have nothing else to cut back on. They have my sympathy.
But i am utterly fed up of hearing how hard households ars being hit by the cost of living crisis when all that's needed is a few minor cutbacks which they don't want to make.

Norhing to do with Labour and i have said upthread, our household income is less than £60k.
But go ahead with your assumptions.

But most of the people on massive salaries (and 100k is massive in spite of what Mumsnet seems to think) are paying the house prices/rent and nursery fees or childminder/wraparound to match. I think a lot of people hear a big number and benchmark it against their own costs.

We can live comfortably on £75k household income in the SW because our mortgage is 17% of our take home pay and I can afford to be part time so nursery was never that expensive, but decent salaries are hard to find down here.

So the constant noise about the disappearing middle class has started to bore you? Not concerned, not outraged that people can no longer afford to have children in Britain - never mind take them to soft play, but bored.

It’s attitude like yours that makes people end up in debt

What are you talking about?

My attitude isn't that people should do those things even if they can't afford it FFS.

It is that in the sixth richest country in the world and second richest country in Europe, we shouldn't have to live in a society where people can't afford a basic holiday or the occasional meal out.

It is barbaric that billionaires hoard wealth at levels they will never be able to spend, even if they lived forever, wealth that they've made off the back of the general population whether through people's hard work within their businesses or through the consumerism which they encourage. It is even more barbaric that they can take that wealth out of the country to avoid paying tax on it, hoarding it like some kind of modern day dragon sitting on their piles of gold.

Even worse than the billionaires are the people like you who act as their handmaidens - claiming to be happy to not be able to afford to go out once a month for a nice meal and only have a holiday once every few years, despite working hard and doing everything society says you should - paying your mortgage, saving for your retirement.

Why aren't you angry about that? Why aren't you angry that the like of Jim Ratcliffe can avoid paying £4billion in UK tax on his £15 billion fortune while his privately owned company gets a £50 million payout despite making billions in profit?

Why aren't you angry that the likes of Amazon avoids UK tax and pays its UK employees so poorly that they have to have their wages topped up with UC, while the company makes Bezos so much money that he can afford to spend £50 million on a wedding and essentially book out Venice for the weekend?

Instead of recognising the inequality and demand a fairer society, you play into their hands, punching down on people who are significantly less privileged than you, people who will never be able to afford to buy a house or pay into a pension like you have been able to.

You blame them for being a drain on society and begrudge them benefits just because they choose to spend what little they do have to try and enjoy life occassionally - even if it is only meals out at shitty chain food places.

You do it because it is easier than recognising your own luck and privilege and because it is easier than opening your eyes to the inequality that exists in todays UK. Its safer not to rock the boat and sit in your comfortable little bubble feeling like a king!

Absolutely. I agree with this.
Despite what pps have said, i have not said and never would that prices are going up and money is not going as far as it did.
What i am pushing back on is the idea that downgrading a holiday, cutting back on eating out and days out constitutes a 'cost of living crisis'.
The constant rhetoric means people are spending annual salaries of £120k on what? And still think they are helpless victims of this 'crisis' without taking accountability.
I also push back that young families struggling is unique to this generation.

I actually think you’ve got a really good point about rewarding good business. I’m an employer. I try really hard to pay above NLW. However, the supermarket knows our costs and bases all costs on NMW for every hour worked in our business from Saturday staff right through to management level. Nor do they include the perks of a a house that are expected in the kinds of roles we offer.

But as a society we have to work towards a much more moral code I think. The old Victorian business men spent their profits on good housing,libraries, parks and town halls. What do ours do today. But it starts with every tiny purchase. Amazon aren’t going to be sponsoring your local football team so don’t buy from them - buy local and British where you can. Problem is people don’t, they buy as cheap as possible.

we also need to absolutely ostracize parents who choose not to pay for their own children. To my mind it’s criminal they can get away with that.

Driving them away by expecting them to pay the same proportion of tax on their wealth as they expect from people who earn through PAYE?

Driving them away by bailing out their privately owned companies with tax payer money despite them not paying tax themselves?

What else do you think we should offer job creators besides:

• subsidising the low wages they pay their staff with benefits while they go on TV and whine about benefit claimants, some of whom work for them

• giving their privately owned companies that have made billions in profits, grants and low interest, government backed loans

• letting them get away with leaving to country to avoid billions in personal tax

• honoring them with knighthoods

That is not celebrating success, it is rewarding selfishness and narcissism.

Maybe we should also roll out the red carpet every time they deign to grace the country with their presence, pay for their hotels and provide them with an on call masseuse? Perhaps you could personally volunteer to follow him round, doffing your cap?

It is not about being generous with other people's money when it comes to the likes of Jim Ratcliffe - not when the only reason he has that amount of money is because his companies have been subsidised by the tax payers.

Maybe, instead of rewarding people who just take and take for their own gain, we should invest in infrastructure and health so that job creators have a healthy workforce and the ability to move their products around the country.

Maybe instead of subsidising companies that pay low wages with benefits for their workers, we should give tax breaks to companies that pay their workers enough to live on without needing benefits and who contribute to society in other ways and tax those companies who pay low wages more to recoup the subsidies.

Instead of using the amount of money someone has as a measure of their success, we should use their contribution to the betterment of society - instead of the Forbes Rich List, why don't we have the Forbes Philanthropy List.

Instead of giving people knighthoods and titles when they do everything they can to avoid paying tax on their personal wealth, maybe we should take the titles off those people and give them to people who don't decide to spend more than half the year sunning themselves in Monacco to avoid paying their taxes!

Stop being such a serf!