Winter Sports

The two young men who greeted me as I scraped ice off the car windows in my dressing-gown, boots and flat cap were too polite to mock openly. 

What We're Up Against

A quiz show Ailz and I sometimes watch featured two male students who are aiming to be corporate lawyers. Or, as one of them put it, "We want to sell our souls to the devil." Yes, he actually said that.  They also admitted that neither of them reads for pleasure.

If they'd kept their traps shut I'd have taken them for Born-Again Christians. They had that look about them. Smiley, toothy, virginal, smug. 

Basic (Very Basic) Economics

OK, so the rich are also going to be hit by the chancellor's latest measures. Good. But will it be proportionate? Will increasing tax on  savings inflict the same amount of pain on the rich as decoupling benefits from the cost of living will inflict on the poor? Of course not. The rich can take it. They have resources. A bob or two to fall back on. That's what being rich is all about. They can take losses without it affecting their quality of life. The poor, on the other hand, feel every cut. A tiny loss in income can spell the difference between eating and not eating, or eating something nutritious and eating rubbish. Take thousands off a millionaire and he's still a millionaire; take a few pence off a poor family and you make them destitute. 

I don't think our politicians understand this. Any of them. They're all rich- most of them by inheritance. Is there a single person on either of the front benches with first hand experience of poverty?