Finance Friday | The last Easter Egg

The government’s austerity programme really begins to hit the poorest in society next week as benefits cuts make the poorest even poorer. This could be the last Easter that some  kids will get Easter eggs.

They can also look forward to losing many other things such as their own bedroom too. If they have to move to a flat to save money, there will be no more playing in the garden either.

The government want to return to Victorian and Edwardian values and that way of life. Women were ladies and knew their place. Last night I saw Rachel Johnson, sister of Boris Johnson on television trying to learn how to become a lady. She thought it was about balancing a book on her head and opening a door without pulling the knob off. It’s about serving others, without being servile, dear…

The working class girls would serve their masters in the Edwardian era of course, succumbing to their every desire. Many single gentlemen employed servants and maids and made full use of them. To escape their enslavement they would often marry and find themselves enslaved to a husband and performing exactly the same duties. There were rules in society enforced by the judiciary, the establishment and by the church. Women and children had to know their place and there were strict class divisions. The upper classes went first class on the train and lived in mansions. The poor relied on hand-outs for which they were expected to be grateful.

There is some talk of people who can’t pay their rents being placed in hostels, a modern equivalent to the work house. I think they will need some new ones and they’ll need to be as big as the old workhouses. Maybe they should be opening up the old lunatic asylums too?

I would normally encourage people to use local businesses like the fish and chips shop, but who can afford it now? You have to cut down and live as cheap as possible and the first thing to go should be eating out and takeaways. It’s ironic really that fish and chips was a once an affordable cooked meal for working people and frowned upon by the ‘upper classes’.

Here in the Black Country, people were mining coal and the industrial revolution was at it’s height in the Victorian and Edwardian period. The Earl of Dudley had the rights to the coal and so made most of the money. When the coal ran out, the rich ‘investors’ grabbed the money and run. That left the people who did all the work with a deprived area, run by politicians without the skills to really know how to run town councils. The industry has mostly gone now and we have retail parks and civic centres full of people thinking up new acronyms and planning more ‘traffic calming’. There will be a Black Country Day tomorrow, check that out on Facebook and add you name to the list of people who will be enjoying a Black Country tradition. If you can’t afford the pub at least get a bottle of Banks from Aldi for quid  and remember the good old days.

What do you think? Do we want the Jeeves and Wooster days back again. Do we need to know our place, doff the cap and tug the forelock? The Bullingdon Boys of Oxford University seem to have it all their own way at the moment. Will it last or will a leader emerge to take them on? Where can we find a working class hero, who didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge?  Please use the comments box to share your thoughts.

Advertisement