Posts Tagged ‘hard working families’

The Tories still have the best tunes

08/09/2011, 07:00:07 AM

by Peter Watt

Back to school this week; families are struggling and life is hard. Kitting out one child is expensive, and we have more than one. Shoes £30 – £40, skirts £15 each and you need several, white shirts £6 each and at least two school sweat shirts at £15 per pop. Then there’s the PE kit. And pressure to buy a new school bag and pencil case. So not much change from £150 there then. More than one and the price goes up. And of course, all of this comes at the end of a long summer, with the inevitable costs of entertaining the kids with or without the cost of the annual holiday.

Over the last few years fuel price rises mean that it costs at least £70 per week to fill the car, parking charges have been raised and the gas and electric just keep going up. You try and cut down on usage, you get your cavity walls filled, your “units used” drops; but the bill still rises. Your weekly shop costs more and you seem to be getting less. Train and bus fares are higher this year as well and they’ll probably go up again next year. So there really is no slack in the budget to pay for the back to school purchases – credit card it is then. Assuming there’s still some credit left. And there’s a pretty good chance that over the next few weeks there will be a series of letters from the school asking for money for trips, photographs and commemorative school tea-towels.

What is worse, is that many are also worried about their job. So they are working longer hours in order to impress the boss just in case. And maybe there is a second job just to help make ends meet.  There’s not much, if anything, left at the end of the month. The TV is full of news of more economic woes to come. It just doesn’t seem fair. (more…)

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