This morning our milkman apologised to me that he couldn’t deliver my milk on time as he’s had a crate of milk stolen off the back of his truck this morning and he had to go back to the depot to get more before he could deliver it to me.

He said this sort of thing has started to happen more and more recently.

And here’s the thing.

There is no resale value for a bottle of milk. It’s a highly perishable item that is worth relatively little.

The person who stole it almost certainly wasn’t intending to sell it for profit. They most likely just couldn’t afford to buy milk for their own family.

They probably only needed a few pints, but because it’s hard to subtly steal 3-4 glass bottles without drawing attention or dropping them, it would have been easier to just take the whole crate.

I really wish we had a Government that could honestly and genuinely understand how desperate people are at the bottom of society that they can’t even buy milk.

Energy prices for heating and electricty are going through the roof, mortgages are scary and many, many people will be repossessed and will become homeless in the next year, including families with children. People are choosing whether to heat their homes or eat, and articles are appearing all over on how to save money by not using your oven to cook, and how to stay warm without heating your home etc.

The Government has quite literally gone mad and caused most of this crisis themselves, and are refusing to see the sheer desperation of a large portion of the population who have been through enough over the last few years of austerity and Covid combined.

I honestly found this milk theft to be so, so sad and I feel so much empathy for the person who stole it. I cannot imagine how hard that person’s life is right now, and I wish someone in charge had even 10% of the empathy that I feel.

Last time I focused on food and cooking, but lots of people have been asking me lately if I’m coping ok with the cost of living crisis, so I thought I would share what else I am doing to cut costs.

First of all I am thankfully on a fixed-rate mortgage for another year so I do not need to worry about my mortgage going up for at least another 12 months.

Secondly, I am lucky that we have had such a hot summer, so I haven’t needed to put the heating on since the end of March! That has certainly saved me a lot of money and means that the increased gas rates have not affected me much as yet. As I have continued with my increased payments I now have a few hundred pounds in credit with the energy company and in fact we were away so much in August that my bill actually went down last month!

However, as the incoming price hikes loom, and the uncertainty of how much it will cost us to heat the house we have made several contingency plans. Most of them are old-school moves!