Spring and the budget

Apparently tomorrow will be the last Spring budget, thank goodness for that. It's bad enough being told once what we can't afford any longer, let alone twice.

I feel like I'm back in the 70s, where food is going up exponentially every week. Sainsburys large pack of butter was £1.65 last week yesterday £2.65. for example. Even Cornish daffodils are £1.25 instead of 99p. I know for a fact the Cornish growers, packers and pickers won't be getting an increase in their pittance,

So where is the money going? Yesterday I turned the news off as a 22stone guy in an outsized expensive suit was spouting off about making cuts. Us - not him obviously.

A few years ago petrol cars were terrible, now it's diesel, petrol and diesel prices have shot up again and owners of diesel cars will be penalised.  I have an ancient diesel 4x4 to pull my caravan. Petrol cars struggle at the best of times and it would be impossible with the pretty hybrid or electric cars.

I bake my own bread, costs me roughly 45p a large loaf.  Strong flour used to cost £1.35 a bag. Now it's £1.65. I make most of my own food, thank goodness, the way things are going up in the supermarkets, it's a good job I do.

Every year we grow garlic, potatoes, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, apples and pears, basil, fennel, sage, rosemary, chives, Some years are better than others but my fruit and veg is seasonal and fresh and I don't have to pay for them.

We pay for the NHS and others benefits from the percentage taken from our wages in the National Insurance payments, a large lump of our salary, added to by 12% by our employers. Yet this budget will make cuts to the NHS to try and make us like the US and Australia to pay for our treatment privately.

Yes this is a rant and nothing to do with writing, my recent book is just after WW2 and rationing has just ended and "people have never had it so good."

65 years on, there's still extreme poverty, division, racist attacks, the rich are still rich and the poor are still poor. Yet anesthetized by technology, gambling and sex - no progress is being made. Aldous Huxley's 1984 brought it home, the lower classes kept in their places
by scandalous newspapers and wars, the upper class the power players keeping them there.

As Jodie Mitchell sang "When will we ever learn?"

Birds sing their little hearts out in broken unblossomed trees,with no idea of life but what they see and feel. They soar in the skies, chattering, making murmerations, unworried
what Trump or Kim Yong Il is doing or where their next feed is coming from.

Spring feels different this year, It doesn't feel like a fresh new beginning.
It feels like the end.