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

[Katypp]

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.

Of course. The "austerity" we saw in the 2010s was ideological. It didn't save a penny, nor was it expected to. It was designed to smash up the last vestiges of the welfare state, to remove the social security safety net, to create a class of desperate people and a lot of surplus labour so we could all see what happened if we lost our job.and don't snt accept whatever terms and pay were on offer with the next one. It reframed people's expectations of a collective society where the vulnerable were supported into one where, if you didn't take "personal responsibility", you reaped the consequences. And if you weren't able to take "personal responsibility"? Great! What a warning for the rest.

And people wonder why rates of illness and disability shot through the roof.

I think people live in the online world where they just see all the tweakments/ stuff as normal
Insta is just a huge advert and there was an interesting headline this morning

news.sky.com/story/uk-faces-economic-catastrophe-unless-it-adapts-to-young-people-rewired-by-smartphones-13547229

I think the Instagram world and reality are far apart

Because all these issues are years on the making. Labour have been in power less than 2 years. They've done a lot less than I hoped whsn they got in, but you can't hold them responsible for thd state of the country after the previous 14 years of psychodrama from the Tories. Plus Brexit has made us all poorer, which nobody seems to want go tell the electorate, even though its true. Its been so disastrous for our economy, that popular support for the EU independence movements in other European countries has now collapsed, because they can see how awful its been for us.

You're still not understanding. The poster was basically accusing OP of disliking labour and saying had it been the Torie government she wouldn't have made this thread. OP said she'd have made it regardless.

Who is in power is not the reason OP is sick of hearing about the COL. No one is saying either party isn't responsible. That wasn't the conversation.

Mine was 18 weeks!

The thing is our economy and every aspect is dependent on spending money, simple as that. Money is a facilitator, invented because progress made swapping goats for jam or labour became unsustainable on a wider level. Now it has taken on a life of its own. Everything about life is set up to facilitate the creation, acquisition and accumulation of money.

Society / community are becoming alien concepts for many. People who value being close to family and support networks are called entitled unless they have enough wealth to facilitate it, and achieving that requires sacrifice of the most basic underpinnings of human existence by moving away from it to get money.

When you look at the huge numbers involved when talking about buying power, it's mind boggling. Billions? Trillions? I mean, WTAF? Property is the clearest illustration of this nonsense. What is the true value of a "house"? It provides shelter, protection, a secure foundation to use as a base, it is usually part of a collection of houses, and can create a sense of community (yes, I'm generalising, I appreciate many on MN prefer isolation and not all neighbours are like that). Humans used to have at least the opportunity to thrive with those basic underpinnings. Now houses are assets with the power to leverage thousands, hundreds of thousands / millions of pounds out of people for the privilege of one of the most basic requirements for survival - shelter from the elements and predators. How can a house that cost 10000 in 1975 really be worth 10000000 50 years down the line?

People opine that there is no "magic money tree" yet at the push of a button banks and businesses can be bailed out with huge sums that appear out of nowhere, yet a carer who goes a penny over an arbitrarily set benefit threshold for their lip service recognition of their task loses the whole lot, regardless of impact.

We invented this system, yet claim "the market" is in control. One minute measures can be taken to leverage the system to benefit the "wealth creators" yet improving things for the disadvantaged is a moral issue up to them to solve within rules that apply to them but not "the rich".

Participating meaningfully in society is almost exclusively pay to play. Even religion is in on the scam.

And when we question the status quo, ir express dissatisfaction, we are condescendingly patted on the head and told we can't possibly understand. Ours not to reason why, just accept that bread costs 20p more than last week because world leaders are bombing the shit out of countries even poorer, it can cost a working woman her entire wages to pay someone else to raise her children, and suddenly the cost of your housing, which you chose according to the cloth you had to cut has been arbitrarily raised by a banking system without negotiation which makes the whole point of assessing affordability a farce.

Honestly, make any of it make sense?

And I'll just tick off a few predictable responses - sixth form debating society mentality, jealous, naive, leftist, bleeding heart, immature, Communist word salad.... on that last one, feel free to add the dressing of one's choice 😘

Labour have only been in government for two years. How do you account for the existence of the COL prior to their election?

It's their money.

You forgot politics of envy.

Rickets is due to lack of sunlight rather than being poor though. It has unfortunately come back due to dark skinned children and their mothers when pregnant being covered usually due to their religion.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/rickets-and-osteomalacia/

Partly. Also nutritional deficiencies which are often related to poverty. Vitamin D deficiency can also be related to maternal genetics, especially babies / children. And it can affect all races.

Poor food or lack of food must contribute surely?

I read a quarter of children in the UK are poor, how on earth can this be right.

Your post sounds like it was written by someone ehi bought their house at the time when the average house prices was the equivalent of about 3times the average salary and thinks people cant afford a house now because they eat avocado on toast and drink latte.
Grateful to God that we can still get by very comfortably with luxuries but I am not sick of hearing people talk about the CoL. If people are struggling, they have a right to be heard. You sound heartless tbh.

It's also lack of calcium

And lack of calcium

100%

Child poverty and poverty generally is inevitable because we measure poverty relative to median income. There will always be a cohort of the population which falls below the poverty threshold. Trying to move one cohort out of relative poverty, such as with the triple lock, will inevitably move another cohort in. Relative poverty has been, quite understandably, relatively stable.

If you look at absolute poverty which benchmarked income against a baseline year, both overall poverty and child poverty have been on a downward trend. It is a goods news story, but doesn’t always support the desired narrative because bad news sells.

We both work and we don’t have a lot of spare money when we’ve paid for everything, and I know a lot of people who are in the same situation.
Both parents are working but yet not earning huge amounts,not eligable for any help!!

the free bus thing is just ridiculous and will help such a small proportion of people anyway!! Bus fares are a postcode potter as some areas young people are free anyway!

My kids are to old for soft play now so they want to do the trampoline place or ninja warrior, I have 3 kids and at £15 entry that’s £45 right there then they want a slush puppy witch is like £4/£5 each then I have to pay for parking, I refuse to pay for food in there as it’s to expensive so for me to take my kids for an hour at one of these places is around £80 it is ridiculous.

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.

How very blinkered of you. You do realise each one of these is someone's business, who had the gumption to step out on their own and set up a business to make a living; becoming a place that employs people.

So, in your view everyone needs to stop spending, tighten their cloth and these shut down, because 25 yrs ago things were so much better? the business dies, the people lose jobs and survive how?

You should encourage local business; not deride it.

When you bought your house in the 80s you didnt have to sell a kidney to fund a deposit; you saved for a few months and got a 2 bed semi. Nowadays a 2 bed semi anywhere in the UK isnt achievable for anyone on minimum wage. Thats the difference. Stop being blinkered.

I have my hair cut once or twice a year. I cant compute spending as much time and money on my hair as lots of people i know....but im glad they do, because if everyone went as infrequently as me, there wouldnt be a hairdresser to go to!

We don't get much vitamin d from diet though. It's nearly all from sunlight.yes, it can effect all races but inevitably people who are darker skinned and cover up are at much higher risk.

We are reaping the consequences of what they set into motion back in 2010. I saw and said this at the time. I worked in family support services back then and saw how the coalition government were stripping away sure start centres and various other initiatives and grants for poorer families and youth.

Blair/Brown set it in motion during their 13 years of virtually uncontrolled spending, tax credits, PFI, etc. Let's not forgot how Brown constantly increased the length of his "fiscal cycle" during which he claimed his debt would be repaid which he never even got close to, and let's not forget his "no more boom and bust"!

Let's not forget a lot of the "new" style of shops set up are money laundering and modern slavery, and probably wouldn't be viable if they were run on a legal/honest basis.