As is usual on these darker mornings, I got up a shade before 7.00am having woken up at 6.30. I always stay up until after midnight at this stage of the month anyway to see if any of my Premium Bonds had struck lucky but I had a much better night’s sleep than the night before. Sky News came up this morning with some financial analysis which is actually quite revealing and indicates why the last Conservative government had become so unpopular. Monthly disposable income fell by £40 per person between Boris Johnson’s election victory in December 2019 and Rishi Sunak’s defeat in July 2024. It is the first time in recorded British history that disposable income has been lower at the end of a parliamentary term than it was at the start, Sky News Data x Forensics analysis reveals. Disposable income is the money people have left over after paying taxes and receiving benefits (including pensions). Essential expenses like rent or mortgage payments, council tax, food and energy bills all need to be paid from disposable income. Previously published figures showed a slight improvement between December 2019 and June 2024, but those were updated by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday. There has been an uplift in the last year, although we are poorer now than we were at the start of the year, and today we only have £1 more on average to spend or save each month than we did at the end of 2019. That represents ‘an unmitigated disaster for living standards’, according to Lalitha Try, economist at independent living standards think-tank the Resolution Foundation. Although I have not seen any data, I would not be surprised if something like the same analysis applies to France and helps to explain the current unrest in that country also. Meanwhile, the Labour party are being pulled rightwards as they strive not to lose voters to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party which is way ahead of them in the opinion polls. Refugees who have come to the UK and successfully gained asylum will no longer be able to bring their family members to the UK, under new plans. Sir Keir Starmer will announce that the rights of successful asylum seekers will be restricted, and will pledge to ensure there is ‘no golden ticket to settling in the UK’. The proposals would see the automatic right to family reunion permanently dropped, along with the automatic right to settlement, the latter becoming conditional. I checked the legality of this and have discovered the following. Not allowing family reunion does not constitute a branch of human rights, but rather a violation of the right to family life, particularly under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) affirms family unity as an essential human right for refugees, and while it is not an absolute right and can be limited for reasons like immigration control, a refusal to grant family reunion may violate this right if family life cannot be enjoyed elsewhere.
In the morning, I went down to the Tai Chi class which I have started attending but which session I unfortunately missed last week. But this week a gentleman about my age with whom I had a great chat a fortnight ago turned up and we were mightily pleased to see each other as we had both missed sessions (and therefore seeing each other) So after the class was ended, we had a hearty chat with each other and supplemented our coffee with some homemade cake. I think why we get on so well with each other is because we are of the same generation and understand the illusions that each of one is likely to make such as the imprecation not to spoil a renovation by cutting corners with the expression ‘don’t spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar’. I used this expression with my daughter-in-law some time ago and she had no idea what I was talking about but, there again, many of these very old expressions are dying out for lack of use. After the exercise (if Tai Chi can be called thus) and a coffee I went to Lidl for my weekly shop, this now being my third trip to the store. On this occasion, I managed to locate some of the things that I have been in the habit of buying quite regularly but could not find last week so now I know where to look for them on future trips. My overall impression of the Lidl store is that it is a slight notch up in quality compared with Aldi but there again, the store is quite a large one. I did not get home until about 1.00pm and unpacking always takes a certain amount of time. Lunch consisted of heating up some curry of which I had prepared an excess the other day complemented with some baby potatoes. Idly flicking through the TV channels, I found a programme in which the presenter was trying to track down the evidence for the remains of the cross upon which Christ was crucified. What I had not realised is that there is one school of historical thought that argues that Romans used an ‘X’ shaped cross that was easier to constrict and to erect with a man’s body affixed to it rather than the ‘T’ shaped cross which has become the most dominant of Christian symbols. Of course, as with all archaeology there is a lot of informed speculation but no definitive proof. What is well known is that many ‘splinters’ of the true cross, supposedly discovered by St Helena, the mother of Constantine, must be fakes as the total sum of the many splinters that have been claimed might have filled a ship-full of wood.
In the late afternoon, I made myself go outside and do a weeding job on the patio that we have at the back of the house. It was a gloomy afternoon and I felt most disinclined to do any ‘outside’ jobs but I needed to collect the two bins from the side of the roadway, after they had been emptied first thing in the morning. I did the same for my neighbour as well because he will still be a little incapacitated after his knee operation about a week ago. I only stayed out for about 15-20 minutes but was pleasantly surprised by how much progress I managed to make in that limited period of time.