Sunday 2nd October 2022 - A Step Away and Uncertainty & Instability

Today’s blog is taking a step away from Overstrand and commenting on the recent mini budget, although for their convenience the Government chose to refer to it as a fiscal statement. Whatever you call it, the announced measures, as we are all aware, resulted in total turmoil, with the Bank of England stepping in, in an effort to stop the alarming fall in the value of the pound. But don’t worry, I am not going to go all political. What I am going to say is, those in the right place must have made a killing on the exchange rate, when the value of the pound against the US dollar, dropped to an alarming low only to rise within a short period of time. A nice little profit I say, buying at the low and then selling when the rate rallied; an action which is termed as, shorting the pound.

There is no doubt we are living in a time of financial uncertainty and instability. While we currently have no idea whether the Chancellor’s tax cuts will have the desired effect and boost the economy, we do know that both the interest rates and prices are rising. As far as interest rates are concerned, we can remember when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and the interest rate on our mortgage rose to 15%. It’s sobering to think interest rates, could once again increase to this level. I am not entirely sure how the increase in gas and electricity costs will affect us but after taking a look at some of the examples it seems we don’t fall into the ‘normal’ box. We were offered, back in August, by our energy provider to fix our tariff which meant doubling the amount we were paying at the time. We decided to wait and see how things panned out; thank goodness we did. As far as I can see, if we have taken up the offer, we would have been paying a whole lot more than we will under the energy price guarantee, which came into effect yesterday. Peter came up with a money saving idea; he purchased a solar lamp. With the lamp left on a windowsill during the day it produces plenty of light in the evenings, if you are just sitting watching the television.

Back to Overstrand. The last couple of days have been quite warm, with the forecast temperatures set to rise to 19°C by midweek. There were good numbers of people near the sea front this afternoon, taking advantage of the good weather. Best make the most of it, is what I say. Today’s photo is of hips on the hedgerows. Although I don’t remember having any, rose hip syrup used to be given to children as a supplement because it contains vitamins A, C, D and E. Syrup of figs was something many children had to endure. Fortunately, I didn’t have to undergo this weekly purge – but Peter did!