We’re probably tired of trying to save money since brexit the pandemic the increased price of food etc

Sometimes it’s easy to save money for example if you go to a coffee shop every day for coffee which is about four pounds a cup now in London then you could save 120 pounds a month by giving up your habits

Should you do that?

It might be a mistake because it might be the only time you go out if you are not working in a paid job outside the home.

Maybe you could go to one of the local church halls where they frequently have coffee mornings. Unfortunately the coffee is not always very good and you maybe afraid that someone will try to convert you when all you want is some cheap coffee and maybe a chat with somebody.

At the moment with the free bus pass older f peopledon’t save any money by walking although it might be very beneficial to your health

When I was a child we had no bathroom so I’m sure that’s saved my mother and father lots of money

You could try only having hot water on alternate days of the week so that you save money on your electricity or gas bill.

You could eat cold food most of the time but that’s not very nice really is it especially for the elderly

Someone I know who’s about 86 years old every morning with our free bus pass and she goes  to o the charity shops. She always really interestingly dressed and she said it’s all second hand. She says out most days until about 4 pm so that she doesn’t have to put her heating on but not many people are quite so fit and strong alto be out of the house for five or six hours in a day in the winter

Of course there’s always the public library that you can sit in and read the newspapers maybe or even read a book and you can use it a computers there as well so you wouldn’t need to heat your home if you went to library for the morning

The other point about all this is that what is regarded as normal now was once a luxury. Like having a shower every day. But if everybody does that you feel embarrassed if you can’t afford it I imagine I’m not sure because I’ve never taken to showers very much but it is very pleasant to have a bath whenever you feel like it.

I suppose we all have things that we regard as essential to our life and then there are other things that we might be willing to give up because they’re not so important

If you are very wealthy person and you’re going to move out of Britain because you’re afraid of paying more income tax then I would say go please go because we are a society. Everybody in the society has to contribute something towards it and clearly the very wealthy are more able to give money than the poor are.

Interestingly the poor give more to charity than the rich. Not such a surprise really is it?

The luxury of not being very poor is that you’re not constantly thinking about money and wondering if you can afford to have a cup of tea while you are out shopping. And that you can afford to have the food that you like I’m not the cheese paring.

If you are good at shopping you will realize that one of the more expensive supermarkets in Britain has an essentials range which is very cheap

You’ve got to be fairly strong to trump round several supermarkets trying to get the cheapest food.

So it’s a subject which is painful for many people. Is losing £200 a year winter fuel alone is worrying you remember that the state pension went up 8% this year and it went up 10% last year which was about 900 pounds for the average pensioner and so losing 300 pounds in the year it’s not so bad compared with getting 900 pounds extra that year in your pension.

But there’s no doubt about it even when you are  not at rock bottom nobody likes to lose some money they’ve been getting and expecting to go on getting for several years

And we were going to be so much more wealthy after brexit weren’t we?

Well  Boris Johnson is much wealthier I think. But he’s done a lot of harm to this country in my view.

I wonder how big the eye of the needle will be for him?

I must remember to tell God that I use easy threading needles and to ask whether that will make it easier for me to get through the eye myself.

I know I’ve lost a lot of weights since I was in the hospital but even so getting myself through an easy threading needle will not be much fun

Some of the meals I was getting were very small such as the following

Butterbean stew which consisted of about two or three tablespoons of butter beans in a soup like sauce with the other onion tomato in it .

Say money on entertainment by having a book group in your house once a month also and visiting others for their book group

I have noticed that nobody ever start some mathematics group in their home in the evening

So that’s ruled out

You can save a lot of money by having a a digital subscription rather than buying a newspaper every day.

I think it will be less than half the cost and you can access lots of other articles on the website I’ll also sorts of different topics so it is really good for people who like newspapers and article was on a wealth of subjects

The telegraph is good if you love the royal family very very much but it’s also a little bit right wing

And the guardian is a little bit left wing

It’s good for those who don’t particularly like the royal family. And maybe with a slightly higher reading age. But it’s just been found guilty of being a little bit unfair to Israel in its news reportage. I’m not sure how that is judged

Remember to come through any subscriptions to magazines and newspapers that you no longer want

I was very pleased that we were getting a Labour government after 14 years of suffering with the Tories

I have never voted for the conservatives and I never will.

I am a little worried because of the lack of experience of many of the people now in parliament and indeed in the Cabinet

And I know that they have to save money somewhere somehow without upsetting too many people. Already the Times reports that many of the top wealthy people in Britain are going to leave before or soon after the autumn budget.

They don’t want to pay more tax and they should be sharing wealth . But if they are like that we’re better without them.

In any case it’s an old story that’s always being rolled out by some newspaper and the Times is no longer what it used to be

The winter fuel payments were never part of the state pension but they were introduced by Gordon brown in 1997

Only a labour Government coukd risk changing them

And that’s what they are planning to do. Well no matter how much it saves it seems to have given ammunition to their enemies. As well as that there is a lot of opposition to Keir Starmer himself and his chancellor Rachel reeves from the left wing in the Labour Party who believed that he us no longer a left wing person. They don’t feel grateful that he has won the election at all whereas I do.

So he’s being attacked in two directions. It’s a pity that they didn’t think about this more before it was made public.

Instead of abolishing it for everybody except those on pension credits they could have made it taxable which would mean that the wealthy would pay 40% And moderately wealthy would pay 20% and poorer people would not pay anything at all in to the taxman.

Even this would have been criticized by the conservatives and by the press but it’s defensible

After all  state pensions rose by 900 pounds two years ago and by 400 pounds in the last year

Removing it entirely from people who just are a few pounds of pension credit is very tough it doesn’t look sympathetic at all and I think people do expect labour to be more kind to the poor or the old or the cripples than the Tories are.

There are arguments on both sides which are quite coherent and logical

But if you wanted to give some on a stick to beat you is you either remove something from children or from the elderly.

And it puzzles me because the prime minister is a very intelligent man and Rachel Reeves is a very intelligent woman

I’m not arguing against what they’re doing but I’m saying did they really know what the effect would be in the media. Always looking for bad news.. or for pretending something is bad news when it is not.

What they really need in their team is someone who has worked advertising

And that rules out me.

My speech to text calls the Tories the notorious and that’s quite a good name for them