Walking the puppy a few weeks ago I spotted something lying in the grass, it was a fork, a shiny, four tined metal fork, fallen or thrown from where I don't know but it was literally a 'fork in the road'.
I picked it up and brought it home. You never know when you will need a fork and after washing and drying it it nestled down into the cutlery draw where it is right now, in fact yesterday I beat the eggs for the breakfast scrambled eggs with it.
Economics were never my strong suit.
There was all too frequently too much month left after the money ran out and various extreme measures had to be devised to enable us to get by.
It usually involved robbing Peter to pay Paul.
So Ed Balls lecture on the economy largely went over my head apart from the reference to the fork in the road.
My instinct is to see the Labour Party as being on the side of justice, working people and pensioners so I was largely impressed with the headlines which described Ed Balls speech and his last sentence makes sense:
'We are now set on a path of slower growth and higher unemployment than was forecast just a year ago this week'.
But something is growing, it is insidious and it eats away at the value of what a former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson called, the pound in your pocket.
Inflation has been allowed to become part of the economic fabric, every visit to the co-op reveals how prices are now creeping up, partly costs associated with manufacturing, partly the result of VAT, partly the result of other costs being factored in.
But what economists call 'the average shopping basket' is now clearly more expensive now than a month or even a week ago, and it does not apply to luxuries only, basic food stuffs, staples of the average family diet all cost more than they did this time last year.
Fuel prices also. I have always used the cost of a tank of petrol as an indicator as to whether an item is expensive or whether it is affordable. It now costs me £150 to fill my car with diesel. So my affordability indicator has had to be revised because not only is £150 more than my weekly state pension it is more than I can afford to spend on any single item without serious consideration and it is also more than I can spend on filling my car with diesel, so we don't get out as much or travel as far which at one level is a relief because we are not faced with difficult decisions every time we come to another fork in the road.
The current government has maintained consistently that the deficit is the legacy they inherited from Labour, this narrative has been developed and repeated to the point where, I am sure, the Conservatives actually believe it but Ed Balls speech made it clear that Labour's record was in fact much stronger when taken over the three terms they held office.
So the narrative needs rewriting.
The policies need revising.
The only big thing about society under the coalition is the cost of the shopping basket and the tank of fuel and they are threatening to get bigger unless some action is taken.
There are always choices to make and a society that is suddenly faced with rapidly spiralling costs needs to re-think its priorities and its policies.
It may be that Ed Balls is right and we are at a fork in the road.
And as the small child with a fork in his hand knows there's nothing more effective for de-inflating an over inflated balloon than a god stab with a sharp fork
I picked it up and brought it home. You never know when you will need a fork and after washing and drying it it nestled down into the cutlery draw where it is right now, in fact yesterday I beat the eggs for the breakfast scrambled eggs with it.
Economics were never my strong suit.
There was all too frequently too much month left after the money ran out and various extreme measures had to be devised to enable us to get by.
It usually involved robbing Peter to pay Paul.
So Ed Balls lecture on the economy largely went over my head apart from the reference to the fork in the road.
My instinct is to see the Labour Party as being on the side of justice, working people and pensioners so I was largely impressed with the headlines which described Ed Balls speech and his last sentence makes sense:
'We are now set on a path of slower growth and higher unemployment than was forecast just a year ago this week'.
But something is growing, it is insidious and it eats away at the value of what a former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson called, the pound in your pocket.
Inflation has been allowed to become part of the economic fabric, every visit to the co-op reveals how prices are now creeping up, partly costs associated with manufacturing, partly the result of VAT, partly the result of other costs being factored in.
But what economists call 'the average shopping basket' is now clearly more expensive now than a month or even a week ago, and it does not apply to luxuries only, basic food stuffs, staples of the average family diet all cost more than they did this time last year.
Fuel prices also. I have always used the cost of a tank of petrol as an indicator as to whether an item is expensive or whether it is affordable. It now costs me £150 to fill my car with diesel. So my affordability indicator has had to be revised because not only is £150 more than my weekly state pension it is more than I can afford to spend on any single item without serious consideration and it is also more than I can spend on filling my car with diesel, so we don't get out as much or travel as far which at one level is a relief because we are not faced with difficult decisions every time we come to another fork in the road.
The current government has maintained consistently that the deficit is the legacy they inherited from Labour, this narrative has been developed and repeated to the point where, I am sure, the Conservatives actually believe it but Ed Balls speech made it clear that Labour's record was in fact much stronger when taken over the three terms they held office.
So the narrative needs rewriting.
The policies need revising.
The only big thing about society under the coalition is the cost of the shopping basket and the tank of fuel and they are threatening to get bigger unless some action is taken.
There are always choices to make and a society that is suddenly faced with rapidly spiralling costs needs to re-think its priorities and its policies.
It may be that Ed Balls is right and we are at a fork in the road.
And as the small child with a fork in his hand knows there's nothing more effective for de-inflating an over inflated balloon than a god stab with a sharp fork
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