The start of a New Year is always one of good intentions, not to mention resolutions, as it is evident that we metaphorically and literally turn over a new page when we dispense with the last year and start with the next. Personally, I am not immune from these influences and do enjoy the occasional inspirational quote when I come across one, which I did a day or so ago. My Droitwich friend supplied me with a quote (which she, herself, was going to find useful) and it ran along the lines ‘Don’t let your happiness lie in other people’s hands’ and is an apparently very well known aphorism which is deployed to help people to sustain their own emotional health and well-being. A bit of research on Google revealed quite a number of accounts about the relevance of this particular quote and I somehow feel that I will not forget it in a hurry. Sometimes, I am reminded of the bitter comment by the French philosopher Satre that ‘Hell is other people’ which one can feel quite often after a bad day at the office, but I have read a quote before which I rather like that ‘Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.’ – Soren Kierkegaard. On New Year’s Day evening, I did rather indulge in the long and drawn-out serialisation of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in which all six episodes were broadcast – I wonder which of the words attributed to the characters in the book they left out, if any. Incidentally, I think quite a lot of people know the story that Jane Austen herself accepted a proposal of marriage on one evening and then thought about it overnight and had changed her mind about it. Women in the 18th and early 19th century were almost regarded as chattels and were very much at the disposal of their male relatives who bequeathed and inherited property from each other and hence the constant theme in the Austen novels about marriage as that was the only way that a woman could generally avoid destitution and the ultimate degradation of the work house. Modern day women, of course, have careers and a degree of economic independence and Austen herself was enjoying (unusually, for the time) success as a female author so she probably valued her independence over the married state – particularly if all of her earnings could be expropriated by a future husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sky News is reporting this morning that Rachel Reeves is ‘quietly hammering’ workers with stealth taxes as a result of her budget last year, a think-tank has said. While the chancellor did not increase income tax, national insurance contributions for employees or VAT, avoiding a manifesto breach, her November statement did see her extend a freeze on the first two until 2031. It means people face being dragged into paying higher rates as their wages rise over time. The Treasury has defended the policy as ‘fair and necessary’. It is expected to raise \u00a323bn in 2030-31 to help the government ‘deliver on the country’s priorities’ like cutting NHS waiting lists and debt. Sir Keir Starmer has promised people will ‘feel positive change’ in their pockets this year. According to the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), someone earning \u00a350,000 today will be \u00a3505 worse off in real terms come 2031 despite their salary being forecast to increase by more than \u00a36,000. On the flip side, pensioners and those on welfare are set to be better off. Thanks to the triple lock guaranteeing increases in line with inflation, earnings or 2.5%, whichever is higher, a pensioner could expect to be at least \u00a3306 better off in real terms in 2030-31. If people relying on the state pension are exempted from paying income tax even once the payment crosses the personal allowance threshold, they could be \u00a3537 better off. And increases to the standard rate of universal credit will mean someone on unemployment benefits will be \u00a3290 better off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This morning my son called round which is always nice because I was not quite sure that he planned to come round today. \u00a0We discussed the problem of the car battery that had failed after only a year’s use and then I started to get ready to take the car into Bromsgrove. We knew it had been very cold during the night and my son’s car (five miles away) had snow on it this morning. I looked for some cold weather gear in a piece of hall furniture called a Monk’s Bench in which we store hats, gloves and scarves. This turned out to be quite a painful experience because I came across a lot of the woolly hats and gloves that Meg used to wear and they were a very vivid reminder of her absence. I suppose I ought to bundle them all up and take them to a charity shop but today was not the day. The Bromsgrove High Street was in a half open, half shut mode – my favourite little cafe where I am greeted each Friday was shut, for example, but I went off to a supermarket and bought the minimum of needed supplies as I still have a fridge stuffed full of Christmas food. The supermarket had run out of stocks of ‘The Times<\/em>‘ and my favourite TV listing programs magazine was not yet on display but I managed to secure a copy of my newspaper at the local garage. Some of the charity shops were open and some shut but I did manage to snaffle up a winter weight shirt (as the weather is so cold) and the charity shop were selling every item of clothing within the store for \u00a31. It was quite late when I got home and I just had a ‘fish-on-bread’ type lunch. not being particularly hungry. In the afternoon, I ran off some ‘free’ calendars for 2026 but I was really looking for one \u00a0downloaded years ago which had all of the sunrise\/sunset times on it for each day of the year. I did manage to locate a website, though, with sunrise\/sunset times centred on Bromsgrove but each individual month needed printing off individually and the cartridge in my laser printer ran out half way through. Now, I\u00a0need to take my various calendars and make then ‘hangable’ by judicious holes and perhaps string but I might leave this task for another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The start of a New Year is always one of good intentions, not to mention resolutions, as it is evident that we metaphorically and literally turn over a new page when we dispense with the last year and start with the next. Personally, I am not immune from these influences and do enjoy the occasional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7948,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions\/7948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}