Wednesday 9 February 2022

How The Other Half Lives

Two news stories have been circulating in the past week which show the huge differences between people in this country, and their attitude to the economy. 
Jack Monroe, outspoken defender of the poor had a go at the Office for National Statistics about the way they measure inflation. They have a "typical" shopping basket showing what the man on the Clapham Omnibus might be buying.[or whatever the 2022 equivalent of that 1932 term is]
For example, why should this basket include theatre tickets and fancy wines? she asked. Poor people do not buy them. There should be a different way of measuring for those with lower incomes. 
The Vimes Boots Poverty Index, is based on a theory in the Terry Pratchett books. Simplified, a rich man will pay $50 for a good pair of leather boots, which will last him 10 years. A poor man can only afford a $10 pair with cardboard soles which will leak within the year, so he has to buy another pair. After 10 years, rich man has spent $50 and still has his boots- the poor man has spent £100 and still has wet feet. "Buy once and buy well" is a great principle, but it is dependent on having the money upfront to pay.
Jack complained that many supermarkets have a 'value' range - where staples [rice, pasta, beans, canned tomatoes etc] are all sold in simple packaging at a rock bottom price. But she has monitored these for a decade or more- and all the major supermarkets have cut the number of products in their ranges, and many do not sell the entire range across their stores. Furthermore, some have upped the size and price of a packet - so the 45p bag of rice has gone, and the cheapest equivalent is £1.20. 
Well done, the ONS, for taking her idea about the VBPI on board, and agreeing to recalculate a simpler, more relevant basket alongside the original.
And well done Asda for agreeing to change their value ranges. Currently there are 150 SmartPrice/FarmStores items in 300 of their stores. But as from 1st March, there will be all 200 items available in all 600 Asda stores.  I hope the other major supermarkets follow their lead. 
Jack understands what it is to live below the breadline - and is totally committed to helping those who continue to struggle. 
Meanwhile craft guru and TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp has been explaining how we can all get on the property ladder. After all, she managed it - she walked to work, only had pizza once a month, and had a sandwich for lunch*. If only people were willing to make sacrifices- give up Netflix, their gym membership, holidays abroad , and fancy coffees each day - and if only they would move to a part of the country where property is cheaper, why then, they too could afford a house of their own. [*the Right Hon Kirstie also had money from Daddy, who is Baron Hindlip, former chairman of Christies Auction house]
How out of touch is that? 30 years ago, the average house cost £51K-  adjusted for inflated, that's £112K in today's money - but the average equivalent house now costs £256K. She honestly has no idea. Yes, you can buy a property in Newcastle or Worksop for £60K - but it will probably be a small fixer-upper. And if your job is down south, and your family too [after all, you need Mum to help with childcare while you are out earning] then it just isn't feasible. 
Many of the young people currently dreaming of owning a house do not have gym membership, or Netflix subscriptions, or a daily Pret cappuccino. If they have a job, it may be low paid retail work, or zero-hours contract, or if they are on the bottom rung of the 'professional' ladder, they are paying back student loans. And they don't have rich daddies to bail them out. 
It is not right to judge them or imply they are managing their money wrongly. Look at this chart from the Trussell Trust, which began twenty years ago. This chart goes up to 2017 - since the pandemic it has got much worse.
And as for this iniquitous £200 "loan" on our energy bills, don't get me started...[Martin Lewis explains it here] As Peggy Lee used to sing
There's nothin' surer, the rich get rich, and the poor get poorer....
And in my book, that is plain wrong. May God bless Jack Monroe, and Martin Lewis, and all those who are working to correct these inequalities.




37 comments:

  1. Absolutely! It's really good to hear that Jack Munroe has taken this on and quite a lot of people/institutions have listened.
    And don't get me started on Ms Allsopp!!

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  2. I am with Frugally Challenged on this. Jack Monroe KNOWS what she's talking about and needs to be listened to. Kirsty Allsopp on the other hand, is talking through her hat. She has great ideas for those who have the money, but for those who don't - well, she just has no idea.

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    1. I think KA just hasn't experienced 'the other side of the coin'

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  3. I'd heard about Jack Monroe and the ONS but didn't know about Asda - that will make any other shopping comparison thing I do more interesting

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  4. I agree, I am ashamedof our country that leaves people having to use foodbanks. Why don't our MPs use their power to help us all.? Don't see many signs of that in parliament. Val

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    1. I darent mention what the Government are doing - there would be far too many comments!

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    2. Completely agree. I rant about this on a daily basis. It's soooooo wrong. I live in one of the poorest areas of the country, where housing is 'Cheap' but the amount of people struggling to stay afloat and living in poverty here is massive.

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    3. I'm sure you see much more of the people in real poverty than many of us. But you don't see much evidence of the "levelling up" they keep promising. God bless you for all that you and your OH are doing in your community.

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  5. That's really good to hear about the first two items.
    Kirsty is such a fool. Honestly.
    CBC and I bought our house when I was 36/7 and I'd been saving for 15 years after living with my mum (paying a proper good rate of rent to her...she lived off my rent for a few years) but still, it took an inheritance from my Grandad and a kind church friend who charged us minimal rent for 2 years for us to get enough for that house. And we have good jobs and no kids. And we have a large 25 year mortgage despite all that. How anyone without all those aids that I and CBC had, can do the same, I do not know!

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    1. And you two are professionals - it IS much harder nowadays

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  6. The ONS had actually announced plans to do this months before Jack Monroe tweeted about inflation.If I recall correctly, it was announced in November 2021. It's a shame that the media haven't shown due diligence to fact check that. She does not include Aldi or Lidl in her 'work' as she claims they are outliers, yet they have consistently low prices. I've always had a low income, I live in a poor town and know that people shop around for the best prices, and that Aldi ( 4 stores) and Lidl ( 3 stores) are always busy, though I acknowledge this isn't always possible in rural areas without access to a car. She also seemed unaware that the supermarkets have rebranded many of their value items. As I'm sure you know, Sainsbury's basics are now Hubbards, Mary Ann, and Lovells. Same low price, just different packaging, which is less stigmatising than having a basket, or lunchbox, full of orange and white packaged products.
    The VMI is supposedly due out in a few days.She gave herself 2 weeks after initially saying it would take a weekend. She claims to have boxes of receipts going back 10 years, which I suspect are now blank due to the type of paper used in till rolls, but also claims 2 recent burglaries of her garage and shed when said receipts were strewn about and damaged. Will the VMI go the same way as some of her other Twitter campaigns and rapidly disappear from view, or her latest 'charity' venture which upset the Trussell Trust as she acted without speaking to them and from which they quickly distanced themselves? It's a venture which hasn't been set up correctly as a charity account and which is very woolly about which charities exactly will benefit from sales.
    As to Peggy Lee's lyric about the rich getting richer, Jack Monroe recently hit the jackpot with her Patreon ( which hasn't been updated since November 2020), as the number of patrons rose from around the 250 mark, bringing in a minimum of £875 per month before fees, to around 750 bringing in a minimum of £2600 before fees for doing absolutely nothing, yet she regularly begs for money on Twitter.
    As you can tell, I'm not a fan as I could see from very early on that lots of things about her didn't add up.
    As for Kirstie Allsop; I bought a house when I was 18, and did give up everything whilst working 60 hour weeks to save the deposit, but the world is a very different place these days. As the mother of someone who lost their job and rented home due to ill health caused in a large part by the uncertainties of a zero hours contract, I know how difficult life is for young people, as I picked up the pieces and fought for her. If she hadn't had a family to support her I suspect that she'd be dead.

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    1. Thank you Scarlet. You are obviously following this very diligently and have far more information about Jack than I have. Thank you for filling in the gaps for us. I am so sorry your daughter has experienced such difficulties - I am glad she had your support through these tough times. I hope the situation eases for her in coming days.

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  7. Kudos to Jack Monroe - I have bought a couple of her cookery books to support her, and my daughter, who has been saving with great concentration in order to be able to buy her first flat (she is in her 30s) uses the recipes quite frequently.
    Dear Kirstie! If she were a cake it would be a rich Black Forest Gateaux with a double serving of cream.

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  8. A brilliant post Angela, I agree with everything you say.

    In the interview on the Lorraine Show Jack said if just one supermarket would get on board they would all have to follow suit or risk losing a lot of their lower income customers, and it seems that Asda has ... well done Asda.

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    1. The supermarkets aren't slow to change, if they are scared of losing custom

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  9. All very much the same in Australia. Great post Angela

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    1. Thanks Jenny for a comment about life in OZ!

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  10. Very interesting Angela. Martin Lewis is such a sensible man isnt he. Kirstie isnt a very sensible lady I'm afraid, and I'm sure it is because she has no experience of the sort of life most people lead. As to JM, I dont read her.
    live. Very charming, but......

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    1. JM is very passionate about her beliefs -0 but doesn't always put them across as well as she might, I think.

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  11. I can tell you how the other half lives. I worked for them for nearly 3 decades. Ms. Allsopp will have trust funds up to her armpits and will therefore be cushioned from any signs of poverty from the get-go. She reminds me of my ex-boss who one day told me that when I retired, I should go and sit in the library to keep warm instead of having my heating on all day! (I never did have my heating on all day and still don't).These people have not one iota of what it's like to live on a budget, don't let them fool you otherwise. As an aside, my ex-boss is in Barbados as we speak, keeping warm presumably.

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    1. BMAY - I bet your boss did very little to ensure the libraries stay open! In many areas, the opening hours have been heavily curtailed - and they can no longer be regarded as 'warm places to go and sit'

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  12. Hmm, if I bought a pair of leather boots for $50, I'd wear them out completely long before the 10 years was up, because I'd wear them every day, everywhere. A poor person wears the same shoes everywhere, they're all he has. A rich man has many, so his leather shoes can last 10 years. How many of Imelda Marcos' shoes wore out? None, I'll bet. She had so many she probably wore each pair once a year.

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    1. They say Mrs M had over 3000 pairs. Wearing a different pair each day it would take her around 9 years to get through her collection.

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  13. No so different in Canada. The supermarket has a zillion ongoing "deals", as opposed to "specials", all continually "buy 2 or 3 or pay the larger price". Great savings for the poor with families to feed, except that they are probably only able to afford the one item at a time with their limited funds. The well-to-do can buy condos and rentals and turn them into AirBnB to make more money, thus removing some housing, affordable or otherwise.
    It is unfortunate that it takes a lot of money to run for office, or we might have some politicians with a realistic view of what life is like for the unprivileged.

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    1. I think 'running for office' works differently over here, and so not all our MPs come from privileged / rich backgrounds. But I agree that buying up extra property for AirBnB is depriving young people of housing

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  14. It is so true that it is more expensive to be poor. My bug-bear is the '3 for 2' offers and the like. Many people cannot afford to buy more than they actually need for the coming week - they cannot afford to buy extra just because it works out a bit cheaper. Why don't supermarkets just put the unit cost down?

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    1. And so often the 3 for 2 offers lead to so much wastage.

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  15. I've noticed how the value ranges have shrunk and the little prices have crept up, along with the prices staying the same but the pack getting smaller. I'm so glad that this is coming out.

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    1. You are right about changes in the "value" ranges

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  16. One of the vacation jobs I had in the late 1970s when I was a student was to collect the prices for the RPI 'basket' because I was working for the Dept of Employment at the time and it was one of the random tasks that fell into our hands. In those days we used to actually walk round the city to the shops and check the prices and write them on a sheet of paper. We were issued with a list of items to check each month and the list varied from month to month and was quite seasonal in terms of vegetables etc. That was at a time when vegetables were eaten according to season and there were few imports. I can remember going up to Bonds (now John Lewis) one month to check the price of a pram. We also used to check petrol prices at the pumps, coal and electricity. We would ring a coal merchant and for electricity we rang Eastern Electricity. I thought you might be interested to hear this.

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    1. That's fascinating Rachel - I'm picturing you walking round Norwich diligently taking notes of all the prices. Veg was eaten according to seasons (a good thing I think) and new mums hoped for a good pram! How life has changed. Nowadays all the data would be collected online. Thanks for sharing this

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  17. Very interesting post and discussion. I don't know the people mentioned in the post or much about how inflation is measured in the UK vs the US. In the US, it is based most often on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers - or the prices people pay in urban areas (more than 90% of the US population live in urban areas), which measures the four most common goods and services purchased in an average month - food, energy, commodities (such as cars and clothes) and services (such as rent and health care). Officially, our current rate of inflation is 7%, but, that doesn't take into account that certain items have increased at a higher rate than others. Prices have gone up, there is no doubt about that!

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    1. I think they do measure things in a different way in the US. But it does feel as if sometimes our Governments try to interpret the statistics in a way that makes things look better than they are.

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