Teachers' strike (comment made on the radio)

Ah, yes. MPs. Could you do the job? Because I know I couldn't.

 

Chuckle - could do with one of them round Chateau Madahhlia on this dark November day!
Did the DHI also have some other sort of work to keep her busy, maybe a bit of teaching here and there, for example?

What, like bankers and fund managers, you mean? Upstanding and respectable private sector people like that? Ah well, we all seek someone to blame!

Me too.
I concede that the private sector is more vulnerable to insecurity of employment than the public sector as employers ruthlessly streamline to maximise profits. There can't be many County Halls or large public institutions without the threat of redundancies hanging over the work-force though, and having sacked people the ones left will be required to cover their work.

It amuses me that the government seems to have an interest in our wellbeing:

BBC News - Plan to measure happiness 'not woolly' - Cameron

Baaaah!

 

Madahlia, I never quite got to the bottom of what the Deputy Head of Inclusion actually did, apart from feeling awfully guilty about the plight of the excluded. It was genuine concern, I'm sure, but of the hand-wringing middle class kind which is guaranteed to get up the noses of most of my neighbours. I would bet that DHI didn't have a hostel for drug abusers in her street, or was accustomed to stepping over drunks as she got out of her Range Rover. Since I met the deputy, I presume there was a Head of Inclusion as well. You probably had to have some kind of special dispensation to meet him/her, on the lines of an audience with the Pope. The Wellbeing Officer sometimes appeared in the local press, urging people to buy skipping ropes.

No! Don't get me started on bankers! I suppose what I mean by the 'pigs' breakfasts' are the high profile cock-ups such as John Prescott's £12 bn NHS IT fiasco, or Kent County Council getting Bob Geldorf's media company to set up the useless 'Kent TV' (good news for a small part of the private sector, I suppose), or indeed MPs appropriating public funds to beautify their homes and duck ponds. Things like this stick in the public consciousness and make them think that anyone who is paid by the State (a) has his nose in the trough (b) is chucking taxpayers' money around like a man with no arms. It's unfair and untrue, but the image sticks.

Now, I'd better do some work before OH labels me a scrounger and chucks me onto the street.

 

You rang my Lord?

 

I've decided that anything which involves handing over control of your money to somebody else is a big mistake. Stuffing notes under mattresses was once considered the preserve of elderly eccentrics, but it now transpires that they have had the right idea all along. The only possible drawback is the chance of theft, but then financial institutions and governments have proved themselves to be pretty good at pilfering, and at least with the mattress option you might have a sporting chance of hitting the culprit over the head with a blunt instrument as he attempts to run off with your nest egg.

 

I'll grant you that, but I don't think its quite as black and white as that. To be dependent on state benefits would not be a good thing under any circumstances. I've known a fair few spongers over the years, and while many of them don't deserve any of it, I still don't envy them for living off fish fingers and beans because its about all they can afford, and living in a rough council estate where you have to be able to either run fast, fight well, or keep a low profile (ideally all three) just to stay in one piece.

My point is that with all the uncertainty in the world, I wouldn't be able to rest unless I thought I personally was making sure I and my family will be ok no matter what the governments and banks do. Obviously I can't make any 100% guarantees, but if I can just pay off what I still owe for my land and pay off my mortgage on my house, then I know that my family will always have a roof over their heads, and the immovable asset of the land which isn't likely to go anywhere unless we have another ice age in the next few years.

Exactly. I'm embarrassed to admit that its only fairly recently that I realised that money is entirely imaginary. Still, I wouldn't like to keep a lot of cash around. Every few years the Bank of England changes the notes, so then you have to put your money through the books to get it changed, else it expires and becomes completely worthless.

 

I won't hear a word against Lidl, it's my favourite shop. I reckon I could keep body and soul together for as little as £2.50 per day shopping there, a skill which I hope I never have to practise too often.

We could all bury our hoards in the back garden, just like they used to in the dark ages. They'd be digging up stained and motheaten wads of tenners in a few millenias' time, wondering who the ancient fertility goddess depicted on them is.

 

I know how good unprocessed food is supposed to taste like, which cannot be said of everybody...and I could list at least a dozen products which I am fully satisfied with, in LIDL.

 

We prefer Aldi as a regular store for German produce and low cost groceries in preference to Lidl.
However in October, when the Christmas stuff comes into stock it Lidl every time for the Chocolate and the Gingerbread varieties.
The Christmas Crackers were excellent in the past, but have nearly doubled in price this year.

 

A (disillusioned) social worker told me that some of the kids living in a local shared house for addicts would have to be earning a great deal of money to have the same spending money that they had on benefits. I'd better make it clear at this point that I wouldn't want to live as they do, but if you don't mind messing up your mind and body permanently and living in a tip, you can apparently have roughly the spending power of a worker on £50,000 pa, if you take account of all those boring little bills the rest of us have to pay.