by Sally Bercow

With the amount of cereal my kids get through, action was required. Out went Kellogg’s Frosties at £2.69, in came Essential Waitrose frosted flakes at £1.69. The kids objected at first – not on taste grounds, mind, but because they missed seeing Tony the Frosties tiger cavorting about on the box. Happily though, as own-brand fish fingers have passed unnoticed, no such bond appears to have been forged with Captain Birdseye. Indeed, our cupboards are now heaving with Essential Waitrose and I’ve cut my weekly Ocado shopping bill by around a quarter (and, yes, I know I’d save even more shopping at Tesco or Sainsburys but, the last time I looked, neither would deliver to Parliament – apparently because it’s a business address).

Now I’m not going to pretend that switching from Kellogg’s to own brand means I’m in the same boat as families whose very existence is a struggle to make ends meet. But squeeze on living standards (the biggest in 90 years) is hitting everyone – even those, like David Cameron and George Osborne, multi-millionaires by birth, with rather a lot of cushioning and very little idea of what life is like for those who struggle to eke out an existence. Inflation is rising twice as fast as pay and the Chancellor is only making matters worse – adding to the squeeze with his 2.5% VAT hike in January.

That’s why Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are right to say that this country is undergoing a “cost of living crisis” and to call on George Osborne to use his second budget to help hard-pressed families, starting at the petrol pump. If Osborne thinks that merely cancelling or postponing the annual 1p-a-litre tax rise on petrol will be a sufficient sop to beleaguered motorists, he’s gravely mistaken. Instead, he needs to go beyond this and reverse the VAT rise altogether, by using the extra £800 million brought in by the bank levy. (more…)