What I think you are missing is…why are tv channels interviewing people who are claiming they can’t afford to heat their hot-tub or can’t afford horse-riding lessons? Think back to before the last GE, we had a Conservative government and at that point we were getting bombarded with news items about desperate pensions unable to put the heating on and scruffy looking people reliant on foodbanks. It’s all propoganda. Now we have a Labour government, and the cost of living situation is getting worse, yet the mainstream tv channels, because they are left-leaning (but pretend not to be) are not telling the real story. Instead they make they acknowledge the issue, but in a mocking way by intervening the ‘middle class mothers’, who effectively aren’t being squeezed much by this issue. They are trolling the public in support of Labour.
Take this announcement of free bus fares and discounted holiday activities. This isn’t to ‘help families’ as Rachel from Accounts is claiming, that’s not even her remit, she’s a finance person….its not her concern whether a kid has been to a theme park or not. What she’s actually doing is looking at the fact that the city centres, cinemas, theme parks etc are struggling and may not be able to either keep going or employ as many staff if they have a poor summer. She’s not trying to help families ‘save money’, she’s trying to encourage them to ‘spend money’. Labour are chasing their tails because they have been trying to deal with the cost of living rises by increasing the minimum wage above inflation, but that just causes basics such as food prices to raise as a result, so they are caught in a cycle of not knowing how to stop it getting worse.
As for the explosion in non-essentials, such as nail bars and deliveroo, we have a society that has slowly become accustomed to a higher standard of living. This is due to poor financial education and due to copying others. There will be people who genuinely believe they can’t afford to buy at the supermarket and will go to the foodbank because they have run out of cash, but will have spent money earlier than week on a take-away, had their nails done, paid their Netflix subscription etc.
Financial literacy and an understanding of what is a necessity and what is a luxury, plus personal responsibility for your own personal budget isn’t taught in schools, and often isn’t taught in families.
Add to that…British people generally don’t like doing dirty jobs in factories or farms. Go to any location in the Uk and stop 100 people and ask them what they do for work. How many are going to say they work in supermarket food or essential goods production? Not many…the majority want to work in non-essential jobs they enjoy (the nail bars) or they work in publicly funded services (with good pension plans and strong HR policies). Think of all the food you eat in a week, you might know people who work on a till at the supermarket…but how many people do you know who work on a farm or in a factory canning baked beans? While British people don’t want to work in producing essential goods….they will be reliant on other British people wanting to spend their money on non-essentials to prop up all those other industries.
Going back to the ‘middle class mothers’. They might have less money to spend on treats due to cost of living, but why did they expect to have so much to start with? Why do they expect their jobs, which involve siting on a comfortable office chair, attending meetings and writing emails, with flexible hours to fit around family life…to pay for a large house, tuition and private schools for the kids, a big new car for each parent, plenty of takeaways and treats, plus money left over to save up for holidays? All while some poor sod who works unsociable hours in a take-away on minimum wage, on their feet all the time with a back back, can’t get out of shared housing because they are on a zero hours contract, lives a no frills existence…serves them dinner. These middle class mothers have lost touch with the reality of what it means to have money worries and to struggle with not having enough money to have little treats or pleasures etc, and the media are just trolling that to make Labour appear that they have solved the worst of the issue.