Glasgow had a brilliant 80s ad campaign proclaiming it was smiles better (than everywhere else presumably). As someone who spent too many years in Edinburgh, I'm not sure I can entirely agree.
It is cheap though... £2.65 for an ale (getting lower the further north I get) and a haggis dinner (now there's an amazing dish ripe for ring fencing) £8.95 at the impressive Committee Room No. 9 bar in Merchant City.
I also had a free trip round the Kelvingrove let's hope free museums aren't axed in the Comprehensive Spending Review tomorrow.
Speaking of which, the BBC have asked if they can use some extracts from my column as part of their Review coverage. They've asked me to sum up where I got to so far, so here goes:
With just a few days left to go, it's clear that I'm going to fail to reduce my spending by 40%.
The devil of this experiment has been in the detail. Setting an arbitrary cuts target was appealing three weeks ago, but once it was clear that my mortgage and my utility bills couldn't be cut by the 40% level, I knew I'd have to start sacrificing ring fenced areas such as food, travel and even ale.
This means sacrificing not just ethics and principles, but a social life.
My message to the politicians facing a similar challenge is that while it's easy to make headline promises and take easy decisions to axe frivolous spending, make sure that when you get down to he detail you don't go so far that the UK becomes the equivalent of a miserly hermit!
Keep reading!
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Sent from my iPhone, please excuse the typos.
Just found this via bbcnews website. Just thought I'd drop a comment about "Ignore animal welfare. Spending on meat cut 60%" Now I am no animal loving lunatic who would sooner die than see tiddles be hurt. But I don't see any reason in buying meat at all when the purpose of the exercise is cutting spending. Which not only is healthier for you, but better for the lil animals, and for the enviroment, and of course cheaper.
ReplyDeleteThink on it.
I agree completely Martin. One of the things this experiment has taught me is that you have to think carefully about all the choices you make. I'm at the stage now that I would rather be vegetarian than eat any of that £2 meat I ate back then. So maybe some good has come of these 4 weeks.
ReplyDeleteI think what you're doing is fantastic and really demonstrates the stupidity of the government just announcing a 40% cut in expenses without first looking at what exactly that looks like. I'm sure other people would be hard pressed to reduce the expenditures in their lives by 40% as well!
ReplyDelete