DULALA

As the English language continues to degenerate into a conversational tool for chimps, the Cambridge Dictionary’s latest edition now includes ‘words’ that could have been invented by my 2 year-old grandson on his potty.

Nanna I need the toilulu

Not one to be confounded by this new gibberish, I thought I’d join in by writing this post in the style of language used by today’s socially media influenced youth.  It goes something like this:

Oi wowars (hey woke warriors) I maysie olfee but me no dulala yet. (I maybe an old fogey by your standards but I’ve not gone totally doolally yet).

Wassa ridicularsee bingo lingo? (What’s this ridiculous rubbish that passes for English these days?) Snot banging. (It’s not great). Onesie deffo brainbashing no solulu, youse bedwettee icepops. (One definitely thinks this is not the solution – you nonsensically immature snowflakes).

Desi pooblab (stop talking shit) and boss Chas lingo (and master the King’s English) belulu mashhead (before your brains turn to mash potato).

Seriously, enough with this absolute massacre of the English language! 

If you can’t be bothered to read, write or talk properly what makes you think that these cretinous new terms sound cool or would be remotely entertained in the world of real work? Imagine how daft business reports or official correspondence would be if peppered with this monkey language. It would read almost as bad as my own efforts to create new dictionary worthy words.

Have you actually stopped to listen to yourselves? Yep, I thought not. Well, if you haven’t then I’d like to recommend a few YouTube video clips of the late great Stanley Unwin, master of gobbledygook because this is exactly what you sound like. The only ‘delulus’ out there are you lot if you think those of us who received a proper education are ever going to resort to trotting out this tripe. 

Cambridge Dictionary - this is not a futuristic development of language!!!!

The Revised 2025 Chimp Edition

PUTTING BABY IN THE CORNER

After weeks of sanding, sawing and slapping on numerous coats of F&B’s Stiff Key blue paint onto the unassembled bookcase, it’s finally time to put this baby in the corner.

I'm making sure she gets on with it

Painted in Farrow & Ball Stiff Key Blue

Working in a room that’s only fractionally wider than the unit itself and hotter than the Sahara is challenging but not impossible with a bit of clever jiggery pokery.

Assemble from the outside then inwards. Balancing the outer frame of the bookcase on plastic A frames and a small office desk, we squeezed our sweaty butts round to screw together the main carcass section. Breathe in fatty!

Couldn't swing a cat in here

Before adding any shelves, lift the carcass into position on top of a separately constructed skirting height plinth to check sizing. Yep, all fits nicely into the alcove gap.

Fits perfectly

If you had one of those flat pack instruction sheets, it would now say proceed to step 2 but we’re just making it up as we go along.

Having checked that the outer carcass fits neatly into the gap, time to add the shelves. I’d previously numbered these along the unpainted back edge to make fitting easier.

Step 2 - fit shelves

As you can see from the photos, shelves have to be fitted BEFORE the final end panel. Why? Because you’d never get a drill or a sausage-fingered hand into the narrow dead zone gap if it was a completed rectangle.

Shelves fitted before end panel

With everything pre-drilled, screw holes countersunk in advance, adding the numbered shelves is a relatively quick task. It helps to have a super-duper set of large clamps to hold all the pieces tightly together whilst making sure all timbers are level. Hey presto! An almost complete bookcase.

Almost done

And now for the anchorage. Due to the construction nature of the alcove walls, the bookcase is to be anchored to the masonry wall on the left-hand side by means of large screws drilled through the wooden end panel into the brickwork. These will be in the dead zone so not visible to the public eye.

Work out where the holes will be on the wall by drilling through the shelf panel first. 

Drill anchorage holes in the end panel

Put the panel into its final position and using a bradawl tool poke this through the drilled hole to mark where the holes in the wall will be. We’ve used 3 long thick masonry screws to hold the bookcase tightly to the brick wall. There. Nothing's going to rock this boat!

Once anchorage holes have been drilled, time to fit the final end panel to the assembled unit and re-slot it into the alcove ready to fix to the wall.

Half a day later and at least a stone lighter – part I of the corner bookcase complete. Baby is now in the corner waiting for its smaller twin to arrive.

Part I of corner bookcase completed

CHI-BAY

I used to be an avid buyer and seller on Ebay, the place that helped you get rid of unwanted stuff and earn a few pennies at the same time but I’ve recently noticed that this market place is not quite the place it once was.

Maybe it’s just me but has anyone else wondered why most sellers now appearing on the platform are not your neighbours but instead hail from the Far East? My partner and I have re-named the website ‘Chi-Bay’ since it is now swamped with cheap Chinese tat.

Interesting that some sellers claiming to be from the UK have either an address that looks like an ancient alphabet or are definitely not from near Macclesfield as stated in their blurb.

Funny how those same sellers claiming to be from the UK whose adverts quote a delivery timeframe of around 2 days always have delayed items because let’s face it, objects shipped from the other side of the world can’t arrive in 2 days’ time unless they’re coming by Tardis.

It’s also those very same sellers that entice you with discounts or invite you to submit offers for their products but then turn down every single one, including those that might be 50p cheaper than the advertised price because they they’re not really interested in letting you bag a bargain.

Searching for stuff has turned into a quest worthy of Sir Ranulph Fiennes. The platform’s search criteria, now about as useful as a chocolate teapot, flags up everything on the Best Match category that bears little resemblance to what you are looking for instead of offering products that are nearer, cheaper and fit more closely the search criteria you’ve input. Is this how AI works?

Not only has Chi-Bay literally morphed into Aladdin’s Cave but the platform’s cut of your takings has stealthily crept up since they decided to elbow out Paypal for payment processing and now muscled in on courier deliveries. Unless you are selling something which generates a nice bit of pocket money after commissions, it really isn’t worthwhile going down this road to Mandalay anymore.

There are plenty of other platforms out there that let you advertise items for sale that don’t take commission such as Gumtree, Facebook or Nextdoor and this makes them an attractive alternative to Chi-Bay. There’s also the wonderful Freecycle website where you can simply donate stuff to anyone who might find a home for it.

Another nail in the Chi-Bay coffin is tax. Some sellers must now declare and pay taxes on earnings that exceed a certain level per year. This threshold is part of the 'trading allowance', which applies to income from various online activities so beware if you do have a lot of clutter to get rid of as you may unwittingly fall into a tax trap you didn’t know existed especially since I think the website is now obliged to grass you up to the Revenue.

Interestingly, there’s conflicting online info on the topic of tax and online selling. Here’s what the Revenue has to say on the matter:

Angela MacDonald, HMRC’s Second Permanent Secretary and Deputy Chief Executive Officer, said:

We cannot be clearer – if you are not trading and just occasionally sell unwanted items online – there is no tax due.

As has always been the case, some people who are trading through websites or selling services online may need to be paying tax and registering for Self Assessment.

So, if you just dabble occasionally to get rid of a bit of tut then you should be OK but if you’re operating as a dedicated online business then expect a knock on your cyber door from the Tax Man.

In the meantime, let me check my Watch List as I’m keeping a beady eye on a hand operated meat mincing gadget so I can turn my freezer full of venison chunks into burgers and meatballs.

What everyone wants on Ebay

Aha!  There's been a further development with my cheeky offer asking for a £1.50 discount on the price of this mincer.

Firstly, the seller came back with a counter deal offering me a discount of ...... 10p.  Ridiculous!  At which point a succinct reply from yours truly affirming that 10p off was not considered a discount but an insult to legitimate buyers.  Not to be deterred, I sent in a second offer halving my original requested discount to 75p off the purchase price which the seller immediately accepted.

Happy days but not quite as I discovered a few days after the auction completed when the seller kindly dropped me a line to inform me that their mincer was not like the picture featured on their advert but in reality would look like this:

Not as advertised

And to add insult to injury, my item would not necessarily be sent in any sort of packaging or contain all the attachments featured in the original advertisement such as a tool to enable you to make sausages.  Hmmm - definitely a product not as described or as depicted in the advert.

I eventually received a box covered in foreign writing with no English translation containing the meat mincer parts which were not difficult to assemble and appeared complete.  I have yet to test it on my diced venison so whether this purchase is the bargain buy of the century remains to be seen.

Buyer beware or 买家自负 (mǎijiā zìfù) as they say in Chinese.  Yep, this deffo applies to Chi-Bay as all is certainly not what it seems to be.

CORNER SHELVES - DRY BUILD

In an ideal world, you’d cut your timber as per build plan then assemble your unit in situ, fettling as you go to arrive at a perfect fit thus reducing the tears and tantrums that form part of these projects. (Mostly mine!)

But we don’t live in an ideal world. It’s double the challenge making a bookcase for a room that’s over 90 miles away with no way of checking you’re on track as you go along. Hey, that’s the fun of it – right.

To help get heads round the design plan particularly as there’s the issue of the unused ‘dead zone’ that forms part of the corner then we’re going to dry build the first bookcase, dismantle it for painting then re-assemble it when back on site. Bit of a faff but easier to transport without a van.

The 'dead' zone where the two units meet

What's this dead zone?  Well the dead zone is the spot right in the corner where the two bookcases meet.  Rather like a zombie date night but with less carnage.  If you were to just put two units together at a right angle there would be books tucked into the far corner which would be hard to get at.

To get round this issue, we've inserted a third long upright piece approx 20 cms from the edge on this wider unit.  This third leg can then be used to block off the dead zone so that all books can be accessed from front of the shelf.  That's the theory, now let's hope it works in practice.

Clear down the dining table – here we come! It’s the only thing long enough to support the tall side panels which are over 2 metres long so its TV dinners whilst we huff, puff and blow the house down in a bid to create our own Frankenstein bookshelf monster. God, it’s a heavy bugger!

Dry building the first unit

Now let's take it apart again

STATE PENSION AGE REVIEW

New month and I’m feeling decidedly waspish. There’s definitely something of the angry hornet in my general demeanour at the moment so look out. Bzzzzzz! BZZZZZZ!!

Britain is soon to become a nation of waspi people if the Government get their evil way as it has recently embarked on a review of the state pension age much earlier than the next one was due. The other half shows as much interest in the subject of retirement as a digestive biscuit floundering in a cup of tea which always surprises me seeing as how he’s inching closer to the big 6-0 day by day. Retirement should be at the forefront of his thoughts.

As I understand it, the current state pension age for everyone is 66 years of age but in April 2026 this goes up to 67 years of age. It was due to remain at 67/68 years of age until April 2044 but since the Government is flat broke then my guess is that is now highly unlikely. It’s simple – pensioners, like gold plated toilets, are just too expensive.

Now for all of us who are on the cusps of retirement then listen up as a state pension age review could be very bad news. Very bad indeed. Just ask the Waspi women whose retirement plans were left in financial tatters last time these goal posts were changed.

Let’s take my own situation as an example. I’m 62 so as the rules currently stand, I would be due to claim my state pension when I reach the age of 67 in 2030. Naturally, like millions of others, I have no intention of working through to the bitter end so an employment escape plan is already percolating.

Due to ingrained super scrimping habits and having paid into a couple of defined contribution pension schemes during my working life then if I really wanted to, I could probably take early retirement any time from my next birthday onwards as according to my calculations I have just enough put by to bridge a 4-year gap between giving up work and claiming a state pension.

However, if the Government suddenly introduces any changes to the state pension age earlier than the year 2030 then I may have to keep working or scrimp a bit longer if I want to take early retirement because the funding gap will have grown like a rampant petunia.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, now let’s think about life expectancy for women in the UK which statistically stands at around 83 years.

If I retired at 67 years of age then dropped dead at 83, I’d have enjoyed a state retirement period of around 16 years. BUT if life expectancy doesn’t increase and all successive Governments keep pushing out the pension age, my paid state retirement period will get shorter and shorter until like the dodo, it ceases to exist altogether.

State pensions are in danger of becoming the Christmas Club all workers pay into that never pays out.

Of even greater concern are other alternatives being bandied about in the media as suggestions to defuse the Government’s ticking pensions timebomb, suggestions such as means testing state pensions. Lord forbid that horror should ever come to pass before I retire!

Just imagine - you’ve spent a lifetime of toil, paid all your taxes plus saved a few pennies for the rainy retirement day, then WHAM! Here comes the candle to light you to bed then along comes a chopper to chop off your head. It’s bad enough that Fiscal Drag is dogging your senior steps like a rabid hyena but if pension means testing is introduced, you could be penalised AGAIN. Doing the responsible thing may leave one exposed to receiving either a low or no state pension at all. There’s no incentive for saving.

Should the state pension be means tested? On the one hand I can see how this might be an attractive solution for a cash-strapped Chancellor but on the other hand, I can’t see how this would be fair to millions of hard-working individuals who have already paid tax or NI on their earnings yet still managed to put a few pennies aside for their old age. Simply put, it would be nothing more than a Stealth Wealth Tax by any other name.

Perhaps a better way of encouraging everyone to fund their own retirement would be to set up a RISA – a dedicated Retirement ISA which would be funded by individual contributions plus a state contribution in the form of a reduction in either tax or NI for individuals signing a waiver to voluntarily opt out of state pensions rather like we did with SERPS several decades ago.

I appreciate the Government currently pay top ups into the LISA (Lifetime ISA) but not everyone is eligible to open these accounts. A RISA could be available to everyone from the moment they begin their working lives as a form of generating a tax-free income in retirement by forfeiting a state pension.

If the Government had any ounce of business sense, it could even link RISAs to stock market investments by making it a 50-50 account, half invested in cash and the other half in UK equities thus killing two birds with one stone.

Some people would be more than happy to opt out of state pensions altogether if they thought they would be paying less tax during their working lives and paying into a ring-fenced investment vehicle that funds their own old age and not everyone else’s as is the case with the current Ponzi-styled Government state pension scheme.

The biggest issue any Government will always face is not how to find the money to pay for pensions because a chunk of that will always come from workforce taxation but how to find the money to pay for the pensions of those who have never worked a day in their lives. A reduced birth rate or AI replacing the traditional workforce taxpayers isn’t going to help either.

Those with the broadest shoulders have *ucked off to Dubai, employed clever accountants to shift their wealth into special purpose vehicles to minimise tax or spent it all on coke and hookers. In contrast, my rather small and aging shoulders have reached the point where anything greater than a 5-year slog to retirement is now likely to bring about a complete spinal collapse. Flogging us all to death is NOT the answer to the great state pension dilemma!

Pay it or don't pay it is what I say but if you choose not to pay it then don't expect us all to keep paying for it!  I await the results of the state pension age review with bated breath. Let’s hope that like all these things, it takes longer than 5 years before any decisions are reached.

CORNER BOOKCASE

Word to the wise – always check the small print before you sign up for anything!

Ssshh, don't tell the kids but how we’re going to make a corner bookcase is anyone’s guess but we love a challenge, don’t we? What do you mean NO?

If Liz Truss can tank the economy in the blink of an eye then I’m sure that with a bit of thought, some scrap paper and a bucketful of tea, we can come up with a plan of action. It’s green for go, go, go!

Now in my addled mind, there’s 2 potential ways forward; we can either cut L shaped shelves or make two tall bookcases then butt these together.

The first path sounds like a complete major headache. The scope for build errors if L shaped shelves are not all identical is enough to put you right off. Keep it simple, stupid especially when your joinery skills are on a par with that of a napping sloth. Me thinks the easiest way forward is to build two units beginning with the one along the back wall of the alcove.

Lucky for us, it’s a three-sided alcove but we soon discovered that not only did the walls taper inwards but that only one of the three sides was masonry, the others are stud walls. I love that term ‘stud’ walls. Phwoarr! Sounds like something out of a builder bodice-ripper novel. Wonder what the opposite would be – wimp walls?

Mapping out the work area

To spice things up further, behind one of the stud walls is a cupboard containing a maze of pipes leading down to an immersion heater tank. Bugger! That means anchorage to the brick wall only on one side. Hmmm – will that be enough?

To make best use of the space and accommodate the growing collection of books amassed during my son’s short lifespan, the first unit will be fashioned out of 300 mm wide pineboard planks. We used the same width to make our bookcases and found that this size is good for most books plus allows enough empty space for all those dust-gathering knick-knacks everyone loves to accumulate.

Having measured every inch of the work area and identified the book sizes to go on each shelf, it’s ready, steady, pencil for a bit of technical drawing. Hours later, a build plan is devised complete with measurements.

Behold - a shelving plan is born

Now all we need to do is go timber shopping then spend the next few days priming, painting and varnishing – the perfect summertime sport.

OZ NO MORE

‘To thine own shelf be true’ lamented Hamlet, Shakespearean prince, at the lack of good carpenters to be found in Elsinore Castle. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark that is going to need more than sword or brevity of wit to fix. Hang on a mo, I’ll just post an ad on MyBard or Check-A-Play to see if I can find a highly rated chippy or woe is me, tis to be done thineself!

Hamlet - Prince of Denmark

Whilst our erstwhile prince ponders heavily on the burden of castle maintenance, I’m lamenting the demise of another prince – the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne, who unexpectedly gave up the ghost last week. “Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”

I still can’t believe Ozzy is no more. That’s definitely put the kibosh on any more ‘final’ tours or future appearances at the Download Festival unless the prank-meister has found a way to cheat death by being digitally resurrected. Anything’s possible these days.

I remember well that epic ‘final’ Black Sabbath gig at Hyde Park that my son and I went to a few years back where Ozzy sprang about the stage showing more va va voom than a Renault Clio. The black-clad crowd went wild as he belted out hit after hit, never wavering or slowing down. He was awesome! And if he has gone to heaven, I can’t imagine he’d be swapping his trademark black ensemble for any of that white ethereal garb. No siree. I’d like to think he’d show them angels (or demons) what it’s really like to rock the underworld.

Ozzy - Prince of Darkness

Still, it’s no good mooching about playing Sabbath songs with a face like a wet weekend when there is DIY to be done. Ozzy wouldn’t have wanted that and so here I am varnishing planks for yet another woodworking extravaganza.

Impressed by our home-made library bookcases, Number 1 Son who is now the proud owner of a small three bed terrace in the wilds of Somerset, has commissioned us to make some bookcases for his tiny home office.

‘Yeah, no probs’ I eagerly volunteered us for the task, knowing full well the other half would devise a million tortures for me once we got home at the thought of cutting any more timber. Carpentry is up there along with brick laying on his list of things he hates with a passion.

Now when I signed us up to this project, I thought it would be a simple job judging by the size of the alcove in son’s home office. Floor to ceiling bookcase along the back wall – bish, bash, bosh. Job’s a good ‘un!

World's smallest alcove?

Then I was given the design brief – a set of corner bookcases (no backs) painted the same colour as the walls. What??? No way!

And so dear readers for the next few weeks, prepare to be regaled with tales of how we dared to put ‘baby’ in the corner but in the meantime, it’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath! RIP Ozzy.

CABINET A DEUX

Now that I’ve got my hot flushes under control and downstairs loo sorted, time to crack on with this cabinet as DIY project number 2 is already waiting in the wings and I need the floor space.

Cabinet so far

Where was I? Ah yes, jazzing up the top section with a creative stripey design. Or at least trying to.

Re-vamping the top

I started off by painting the exposed edging strip the same teal colour as the rest of the cabinet. Looks okay but even though I carefully sanded the area prior to painting you can still make out thin strata lines under the paint.

Front edge painted Milltown colour

Perhaps I should have applied a light coat of wood filler or some wonder face cream to the area to reduce the appearance of fine lines or wrinkles.

I could have just left things at that point but a small nagging voice in the back of my head was urging me to unleash creative forces. Three coats of gold paint later, we now have a glitzy gold strip along the front edge. Looks nice and goes well with the cabinet legs.

Gold coloured edge

As the veneer on the top of the cabinet looked so nice, it seemed a pity to cover it with paint. It’s been left in its original state but the high back beading strips have been painted teal to match the main body of the cabinet.

Back bead strips painted in Milltown colour

The finished top

With the top finished off and the door re-attached, all that is left is to varnish the whole lot then add those last little touches before it can be given the final completion sign off.

GENERATION V

Not satisfied with having annoyed most businesses, workers and retirees, Vote Fear Keir is now reaching out to the nation’s ‘youf’ to save his bacon by giving all 16 yr old peeps the right to go to the polls.

Considering half of this demographic probably can’t even spell Polling Station and as most never leave the confines of their untidy bedrooms unless its to eat or pee then Farage needn’t lose sleep over this latest proposal.

Somehow, I can’t see a mobilised army of revolutionary Generation Vote storming political bastions with demands to free all Pokemon, reduce the cost of Xboxes or legalise cannabis. At 16 I wasn’t even remotely aware or interested in what happened in Parliament. There were always more pressing concerns such as hanging out with mates, sneaking into nightclubs/pubs or devising ways to wear make-up without being caught by dad.

To many youngsters, political parties are things you gatecrash armed with bottles of alcohol purloined from parental cocktail cabinets.

Apathy often rules in the 16 -18 demographic so how will the Government engage with this new electorate? Perhaps they could sex up elections by changing the current stuffy old polling station way of voting into something exciting like a game show, where punters can vote via smartphone from the comfort of their sweaty-sock-smelling teen caves.

I envisage future elections rather like a show akin to The Traitors where MPs sit round a huge table wearing voluminous hooded black capes making promises about future policies. Voters could then use a QR code to eject any ‘traitors’ who are clearly lying through their back teeth and not to be trusted. The last person left in the room that lies most convincingly gets to be Prime Minister. Simple. Far more entertaining than the current general election process. Throw in a free Dominos and you’re likely to have young people voting in droves!

Kevin & Perry go to the polls? I can’t see it happening unless their parents drag them along. Isn’t there the risk that having allowed 16 – 18 year old’s the chance to vote, they’ll also want to do what every other adult does legally ie drink, get tattoos and sign up to numerous buy now, pay later agreements? Could this be the thin end of the wedge for Sir Keir?

THE PLUMBER ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

No point ringing once because with the cacophony coming from the gas works taking place outside, the dinging doorbell has about as much chance of being heard as an ant fart.

Chaos in the cul-de-sac

Angle grinding the concrete pavement outside my bedroom window at 7.00 am on my day off – I mean, come on!!!!  And what do you call that reinstatement work?  It's a bloody mess!

The pavement in front of my drive - what a mess!

Still, eventually the faint sound of knocking came through above the din to reveal a sweaty-faced plumber laden with tools. Poor bugger had had to park half way up the road there being no room in the already overcrowded gas van mayhem at the bottom of the cul-de-sac.

Half a day later in temperatures that would melt Antarctica, a downstairs cloakroom slowly emerges from its cardboard box chrysalis and magically morphs into a beautiful porcelain butterfly.

The world’s smallest back-to-wall toilet, the Roper Rhodes Zest, sits proudly in front of a white gloss cabinet along the back wall.

You can't get smaller than this

A compact square hand-basin complete with brushed brass coloured tap and matching clicker waste hangs on the wall near the door.

Wyndam compact basin with Levo brushed brass tap

Brass coloured towel and loo roll holders decorated with ornate swans (Anthropologie) fitted on the tiles to replace the tatty old chrome ones. Swans were the closest thing I could find to compliment the flying cranes of the wallpaper.

Anthropologie swan towel ring

Anthropologie swan toilet roll holder

Vintage brass light pull (Ebay)

Everything flushes or gushes as it should thanks to the sterling efforts of the plumber and his mate who had to work in anything but ideal conditions which was clearly reflected in the £700 bill hitting my inbox later that evening. Thanks lads, we couldn’t have done it without you!

No more racing upstairs for a widdle as we can now contemplate life, the universe and everything from the comfort of our spanking new loo. I promised the other half a poopy parlour fit for a king - I hope this one ticks all his turdy boxes.

BEFORE

AFTER

DICKENSIAN POVERTY

Please sir, can I have some more bacon?

Yesterday’s BBC headlines were so full of reports of Dickensian style child poverty that I half expected old Ebenezer Scrooge himself to leap off screen into my lap as I was typing this post.

I mean living in rat filled houses is no joke but is the author of said article expecting toddlers to ring Pest Control to complain about rodent infestations? Nope that’s definitely a job for mummy or daddy.

Having read the article, two questions swirled round the old noggin like a lump in a saucepan of Bisto:

1) What is meant by the term ‘child’? Are we referring to the legal definition of minor ie a person under 18 years of age or is there another benchmark being used by the Government to outline the hideous deprivation encountered by the youth of today?

2) What is meant by the term ‘poverty’? Since most minors own few tangible or financial assets in their own right then I struggle to understand how children can indeed be poor.

Dr Google’s Dictionary shows the below as a definition of the word ‘poverty’:

Poverty is generally defined as the state of being extremely poor, lacking sufficient resources to meet basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. It can be measured in both absolute and relative terms. Absolute poverty focuses on the lack of resources to meet basic needs, while relative poverty looks at an individual's or household's income in comparison to the median income within a society.

So, in my mind, it’s not really children that are poor in themselves but it’s their parents/guardians who lack wonga. Looking at the above definition then it’s more a case of Relative Poverty than Child Poverty but using the term ‘child’ is likely to carry more gravitas and stoke up the outraged a lot more than just reporting on the fact that some families can’t make ends meet.

Part of me feels for these people. Decades ago, I was a single mother raising 2 children with an oversized mortgage to finance and a job paying slightly over the threshold for benefits. No Government assistance for you, lassie - maybe God will provide? Of course, no heaven-sent cheques ever landed on the doormat.

I soon realised personal wealth was the result of choices made in life and one would need to look closely at what choices families affected by ‘child poverty’ are making because as I discovered in my years of hardship, you can cover most bases by just making a few sacrifices.

Here are a few financial life choices we all face – if you were on the bread-line, what would you choose?

Do you choose to have a smartphone that might be on a contract plan costing £30 per month or do you choose to scale back your phone to an old-fashioned pay-as-you-go brick style one and use savings to pay off your energy bill? Same goes for expensive gym memberships or other monthly subscription services. There’s a lot to be said for free exercise in a local park, on the beach or buying DVDs in a charity shop that you can re-watch. It’s a £1 for 4!

Do you choose to go to the hair or beauty salon for a regular cut/blow dry, waxing or shellac nails which cost you around £25 or more or do you choose to grow your hair, paint your own nails, use a lady razor then blow the savings on kid’s shoes/school uniforms?

Do you choose to smoke, drink or gamble every week - £16 packet of ciggies, £5.50 for a pint and £10 for a punt, estimated expenditure of approx. £31.50 or do you choose to spend this cash on school lunches for your hungry little darlings? Same goes for designer coffees, meal deals or takeaways which often add up to a significant sum every week. You can live without! Better still – just make your own!

Do you choose to follow the latest fashions or drive a top of the range car or do you choose to wear the same old glad rags and pootle about on the bus? Kids usually go free or half fare on the bus or heaven forbid, you could actually walk to school which would be good for both physical and mental health. OK so demographics may rule out buses in a lot of rural areas but I’m sure you could do with a lot less cheap tat from Temu, Shein or other such websites.

As a struggling ex-single mum, I even went as far as getting rid of my telly and using cardboard inner soles to make my holey shoes last longer in order to make sure I had enough to keep a roof over our heads. Even changing the telephone landline so that it only received incoming calls made a big financial difference (no smartphones back in the 1980s).

I have two wonderful grown-up kids who lived through thick and thin yet have managed to survive into mid-life with not a single mental health issue. Both know the value of working hard to earn money.

Personal wealth or poverty is one of those Schrodinger’s Cat conundrums because we are all both rich and poor at the same time at every given moment. What? It’s true. Let me elaborate further on this point.  Elaborate me!

Supposing that personal wealth was calculated based on the present value (PV) of all the tangible assets owned plus money held by an individual. Add it all up and we’d arrive at a total value (TV). Now imagine we’ve done this for everyone in the UK. Compare your own PV to the PV of anyone else on this list and you’ll see that you’re both richer than some and poorer than others at the same time.  Who knew?

Bear in mind that the total value of all your worldly wealth also fluctuates pretty much on a daily basis because the underlying present value of tangible assets such as houses, cars or shares changes according to market valuations and loads of other factors. This means that rankings on a list of rich or poor people are like shifting sands pulled about by a daily tide. It’s all a matter of where you end up when the tide's in or out.

Without wishing to sound smug or preachy (I am?), at the end of the day what I’m trying to say is it all comes down to choices. We’ve also got to remember that there’ll always be HAVEs and HAVE NOTs in life – not every child can have Nike trainers or holidays to the Bahamas. It’s just the way it is.

And as for lifting the 2-child benefit cap – I have to vote NO on that one. Having children is most definitely a lifestyle choice and one that should be made according to the means you have available. If you can afford to have 3 or more kids then great - the more future taxpayers, the better but it shouldn’t be a case of popping out sprogs just to get paid so you can avoid going to work or live a life on benefits. The taxpayer cannot be expected to foot the bill for your personal Spice Girls line up or football team.

In any case lifting the cap will do little to remedy the situation for some families because again, it all comes down to looking at the choices being made and if parents are not prepared to make changes/sacrifices then giving them extra benefits is quite frankly a waste of time and taxpayer money. Come on, we all know it won’t be spent on school dinners or uniforms. 

What’s needed are better mechanisms to identify families who qualify under this ‘child poverty’ banner then provide them with dedicated debt/lifestyle counselling so they can make the right choices then stand proudly on their own two feet.

You’ve got to cut your cloth according to how much you ACTUALLY HAVE and not how much some society profiling bureaucrat sat in an air-conditioned office thinks you should have.

And as for the bacon - price of a packet generally under £2, packet of bread is about £1 so for less than the cost of a pint, kids could have bacon butties if their parents wanted them to.  

Shame on you BBC.  This is not NEWS!  Just Government propaganda guaranteed to pander to those do-gooding campaigners who probably have never been 'poor' themselves.

CHECK A&E TRADE

Well, well, well – I can’t wait to see how Two-Tier Health Kier is going to get this initiative off the ground

Front page of Saturday’s edition of The Times outlines a new proposal to link patient satisfaction to NHS budget payments by allowing punters to give feedback on services received. 

Leave a review on Check A&E Trade

Will Wes Streeting be setting up a new Check A&E Trade or a Hospital Trip Adviser type website where patients will be able to post reviews after appointments? I do hope so as I can’t wait to read other people’s comments on their experiences with the No Hope Service.

Performance related pay has been the mainstay of financial services for decades so I applaud this radical proposal to create a meritocracy in delivering healthcare. Those who provide the best service should be amply rewarded and those who don’t should be put on a Performance Improvement Plan with further sanctions imposed if targets are still not met.

However, my experiences of working in PRP (Peformance Related Pay) environments is both positive and negative. As an employee motivated by the thought of an extra couple of thousand quid in my pay packet at year end, I always strived to give 120% and go ‘above and beyond’ to use the bank’s own corporate jargon. My January pay packet was always a fat wallet making all those 12-hour days very worthwhile but not so for those at the bottom of the heap.

PRP breeds resentment. Those who can’t or won’t step up to the plate get de-motivated, resentful and even less inclined to meet targets. Performance Improvement Plans often do little to change the status quo.

As an ex-manager, I remember the annual PRP process as a vicious bun-fight. Departmental heads locked in an airtight room screaming at each other as they vie for a slice of the PRP pie for their staff. Oh yes, there’s only a finite budget allocated for staff reward schemes usually divided into Top, Middle and Bottom buckets into which all staff are categorised. The bucket you end up in determines your annual bonus so you’ve got to hope your manager has the loudest voice.

Assessing performance against PRP criteria is an exhausting and divisive process. It’s hard to remain objective and not let your own personal feelings or judgements come to the fore when ranking members of your own team making it even harder to come up with a Top, Middle or Bottom list.  Can you imagine how difficult it would be to fairly assess one hospital against another?

In life there’s always winners or losers. What criteria will the Government use to rank NHS trusts in terms of performance and what reward will this be linked to? Will they award a fixed amount for every positive patient review? Or will rewards be skewed by politics such as levelling up agendas? How will they deal with negative reviews? And what if all the best performing hospitals were in the South, would they get larger budgets than those in the allegedly deprived North? There are a million questions to be answered.

Rather than implement a standalone performance related pay system linked to patient feedback, the Government would do better to implement process changes to weed out all those needless bureaucratic institutionalised ways of working followed religiously by the NHS. The current health bible needs to be ripped up and re-written so it is a thinner tome. To reduce waiting lists what is needed are quicker patient pathways to effective treatments not that meandering A to B route via C, D and E in order to get the drugs or interventions needed.

Carrot and stick as a means of improving the NHS, cutting waiting lists and achieving excellence in service delivery sounds great from a patient’s perspective but how this will work in practice remains to be seen. 

In principle this idea could make poor performers buck up particularly if budgets are at risk but to be sure there’ll be squealers who’ll cry foul at these proposed changes.  

My 5 star review will be given when my ongoing neck problem has been properly sorted but as the NHS have washed their hands of me claiming there is nothing more that can be done then for now its a big fat 0 on the scoreboard.

CABINET CABERNET

2025 is a very good vintage, that is if your grapevines haven’t withered away in these sub-tropical temperatures.  However, it’s not all sour grapes this year.

We often say ‘can’t complain’ when talking weather but what we really mean is we’re going to endlessly crap on about all things climatic until the cows come home. Come on, this is Britain after all and complaining is another thing on the list of stuff we’re good at. When moaning becomes an Olympic sport, Britain will top the medals table.

But if you have managed to squeeze a few barrels of vino out of your vineyard then you’re going to need a fitting place in which to show off your bottles of homemade plonk. Like one of my beautifully upcycled vintage cabinets.

‘I thought you said no more cabinets’ muttered the other half gingerly tiptoeing round the array of paint pots, brushes and rolls of wallpaper scattered across the lounge floor once more. Yeah, I may have said that yonks ago but then again ….

Rachel from Accounts is not the only one splashing cash harvested from the magical money tree growing in the garden of No 11. I’ve spent the princely sum of £5 on yet another piece of old tat that caught my eye in Chi’s local Heart Foundation Shop. What a bargain! Definitely cheaper than the recent acquisition of British Steel or French gendarmerie paid to patrol Normandy beaches.

Vintage cabinet bargain at £5

This latest cabinet acquisition will be an upcycling challenge for me since it has not one section to wallpaper but two being a unique triangular shape.

Roomy interior 

Overall, the cabinet is in relatively good condition for its age except for the damaged veneered edge on the top. Not skilled enough to attempt a repair to the original veneer then my plan is to very carefully cut the broken sections out to create a new edging strip along the outer edge of the top piece.

Damaged veneer on the front edge

Using a very sharp thin bladed scalpel, carefully score a fine line on the veneer where you wish to cut. Don’t drag the blade backwards and forwards and this might splinter the remaining veneer. Repeat your cut in the same direction until you reach the wood under the veneer then using the flat edge of the blade, slowly lift away the veneer bit by bit.

Carefully removing some veneer to create an edging strip

The internet recommends using heat guns or steam irons and wet cloths to soften the underlying adhesive which then enables veneer to be easily removed. However, as I’m only removing a very small section then to prevent damaging the rest of the top section, I’ve decided not to use these methods but instead go my own way.

Once the wood underneath is fully exposed, the edging strip can be sanded then prepared for painting.

Edge ready to prepare for decorating

Having previously refurbished three vintage cabinets then it didn’t take long to prime up the main body, paint it with furniture paint and apply two strips of wallpaper to the interior of each side.

Primed using Zinsser Bin primer

2 x coats of 'Milltown' furniture paint

I’m using some of my leftover Holden Lemurs wallpaper in teal for the interior and paired this up with a furniture paint called ‘Milltown’ purchased from B&Q. The teal background colour of the wallpaper is an almost perfect match for this shade of paint.

Holden's Lemur wallpaper in teal colour

Tropical interior and lemur sanctuary

Once again, I’ve painted the cabinet legs in a metallic gold colour. The lemur wallpaper has many colours in it that could have been used as an accent colour for the legs such as vibrant pink, bright turquoise blue or even black to blend your design in with the actual lemurs. There’s a lot you can do artistically with this type of wallpaper as your background.

Gold painted legs

Fortunately, the cabinet door is pretty intact, no broken glass panels, missing keys or damaged locks which means little extra work plus lot of original features that can be kept. I like to retain some of the original character of each cabinet I upcycle so this time, I’ll be keeping the outer vertical bar unpainted as the veneered finish on it is very good. The remaining door edges will be painted, all inner borders picked out in metallic gold.

My four-legged assistant oversees door painting

So far so good. Now it’s time to rip off my clothes, stand naked in front of the oscillating table top fan whilst licking a cornetto in a bid to cool off my fevered blogging brow as it’s swelteringly hot in Chi-biza. Bollocks - the chocolate’s melted onto my boobies. What a messy bugger!