6 october 2010, wednesday, manchester

Home sweet home, and without a boarding card, as it was texted to me on my phone, and I just flashed that as I went through. Amazing ! Holed up at home for the day (19 november) but piling through lots of stuff, and mixed feeling about seeing us held up in the ft. As a family, we are digesting the news about child benefit (richer folk will lose it), worth a hundred and fifty pounds a month to us. I have to say that with the monumental nature of the savings that will have to come, if we are indeed as a society to do what needs to be done by the poor, all these higher-income supplements are surely going to have to fall by the wayside. As one bbc wag said though, that's £1bn done, so just another £82bn to go now. It's going to be a long and tortuous couple of years, and just about everyone is going to be getting less of just about everything at the end of it, and so the sooner we get used to living in a new paradigm the better.