6 hours Ago By Susan Dalgety
Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. When Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised before the election that she would not raise taxes for “working people”, I think she may have had her fingers crossed behind her back. Because a tax on the wages of working people clearly has the same impact as putting up their income tax.
Back to the 4.2 per cent jump in the cost of food this year. That means nearly a fiver on a £100 weekly shop for a family of four.
And estimates suggest that since 2020, the cost of a family’s weekly food and drink bill has gone up by £37 a week. Little wonder that nearly half (48 per cent) of parents say they are skipping meals so that their children can eat instead. Advertisement Advertisement One of my abiding memories of my childhood was of my granny, in her flowery pinny and tightly permed curls, standing by the stove eating her dinner (which was always at midday) while my grandfather and uncle sat at the table tucking in to mince and tatties or whatever was on offer that day.
She made sure their plates were full before spooning what was left on to her plate which, more often than not, was a much smaller portion than she gave the men in her life. God knows how little she ate when bringing up her 12 children, because son number four (my dad) said he can never remember her sitting down to eat. She always ate what was left over.
The thought that we have gone back to those days, when mums – and dads – are sacrificing food so that their children get enough to eat, fills me with pain. What happened to progress? Advertisement Advertisement And there’s even worse news. A study out last week by the Food Foundation shows that the soaring cost of healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables means healthier options are now more than twice as expensive per calorie as junk food.
The cost of some vegetables has gone up by as much as 150 per cent. Little wonder that hard-pressed families stock up on carb-heavy food like pizza, chips and pasta. Healthy eating has become a privilege for the better-off.
We can argue all day about how we got here. Brexit disrupted supply chains. Covid helped usher in the cost-of-living crisis and inflation.
Supermarkets are passing on the Chancellor’s NI hike to their customers. The list is as long as it is depressing. The only consolation is if you are lucky enough to live near a discount supermarket such as Aldi, you can save nearly £400 a year, with Lidl a close second.
Gone are the days when the two chains were the butt of jokes, with their middle aisle offering the only reason many people shopped there. Today, with the cost of basic food stuffs soaring, all I can say is thank god for the Germans..
