Doing Justice, Loving Mercy .......

It can be difficult at times to know what is going on.

Today I took my car into a garage for an oil change.

It should have been a simple procedure. Undo a sump nut place a bowl beneath the engine block stand back wait until the first flushing becomes a dribble tighten the sump nut and pour the new oil into the car. 

But nothing these days is what it seems.

So the job became more complicated because the mechanic having put the car up on the ramp discovered that my four wheel car was in fact a two wheel car. The prop shaft had been removed at some point in its life. 

Panic!

Given that (at 77) I no longer have any enthusiasm for crawling underneath cars to repair them, I have in the past but not now, the lack of a prop shaft had passed me by. So I drove the car home with the same dirty engine oil and began to wonder why, having passed four or five MoT's, had repairs to both clutch and rear differential, no-one had thought to mention the missing propellor shaft. Indeed was it there when I bought the car? Was it removed as an economy to reduce the fuel consumption?

The whole matter was confusing and left me confused, does the car have a future or should I drive it to the scrap yard and walk away?

Cars are of course themselves a money pit, you either spend money maintaining and running them or you buy new and spend money on depreciation, generally I have opted to drive older cars and to take a chance on maintenance costs being lower than depreciation. That certainly has been the case for this car. Probably not a win/win but not a massive lose/lose either.

As with cars so the messages from this Government are confused and confusing.

Recently we had a senior conservative advising people that if they were struggling with the cost of living that they should work longer or find a better paying job. Get on yer bike. But the honourable lady in question seemed oblivious to the fact that the Government of which she is a part have in fact contributed to the increase in zero hours contracts, fire and rehire strategies and the general lowering of living standards whilst contributing to the increase in the costs of living.

The Governor of the Bank of England described price increases as 'apocalyptic' and certainly according to the Office of National Statistics the price of many of our staple foodstuffs such as margarine, tomatoes and apples have risen by as much as 45%.

Additionally increases in fuel prices, used cars, clothing rose steeply although Avocados and Salmon Fillets saw a fall in prices which offers another opportunity for the government or its spokesperson to recommend changing the menu for supper.

The current narrative, of course, blames the war in Ukraine for rises in the costs of grain, fertiliser and sunflower oil. But the narrative is misleading. The cost of living has risen because of inflation whilst wages and benefits and pensions have fallen as a direct result of removing the £20 uplift in Universal benefit and reneging on the triple guarantee for pensioners. All of this whilst lowering taxes on the wealthy and allowing disproportionate windfall profits for energy companies and supermarkets.

The impact of the cost of living crisis impacts not only on peoples way of life it also impacts on people's health which in turn impacts on the NHS.

The gathering storm is turning the clock back years and as I look in my rear view mirror I can see much more clearly how the post war Labour Government improved living standards for so many with investments in housing, education, health, family budgeting, child allowances. Even in later Governments Tony Blair and Gordon Brown introduced Sure Start Centres and worked hard to reduce child poverty. All that ended with the Cameron/Osborne commitment to austerity aided and abetted by the Lib Dems.

Now increasingly, the Chancellor, when he appears on the TV News, seems to have little or no idea about what remedies might be introduced to help people cope with the increase in the cost of living, the upbeat enthusiasm of 'eat out to help out' has simply disappeared. 

So as I struggle with my existential car crisis many people are faced with much more challenging existential questions: to heat or eat? To feed the children or starve themselves? To look for a better paying job or stick with the current secure one?

This is a Government that has run out of ideas, time and policies. The Governor of the Bank of England presumably doesn't use words such as 'apocalyptic' easily or readily. But if we are facing an 'apocalypse' then it is urgently necessary to seek a change of regime, a government with a fresh mandate and with fresh ideas who will govern fairly and in the words of the prophet Micah:

Do justice, Love Mercy and walk humbly with God.