HOW ABOUT BEING FRUGAL?

Recently I was sent an article from the New York Times which suggested Britain had been virtually destroyed by eight years of austerity. Examples were drawn from some blighted parts of the North West highlighting some specific examples of human misery that Dickens in his pomp could not have bettered. It concluded:

“Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty”

You can look at virtually anything through either end of a telescope and you can guess through which end the gloomy chap who wrote this was looking. I see things differently. The cities of Britain are flourishing - not just London, which few would question is the greatest city in the world. The others like Manchester, described by the cantankerous Jeremy Clarkson as the Berlin of Britain, Birmingham , Newcastle, Leeds, Glasgow, Belfast – all of them are  shining examples of renovation and new hope.

Am I a cockeyed optimist? Well maybe but the dystopian vision of the New York Times is wildly removed from my perception. Except in one respect. ‘Austerity’ has a bitter price to pay. The word that is. The attitude it conveys. Since 2008 that word has preyed heavily on the needy, hopeless and vulnerable. It gets the blame for everything wrong in our lives.

Yet the reality of 2008 and the years after is we were living beyond our means. The correction that was needed at every level was to adjust that. ‘Austerity’ however is  a humourless, Victorian workhouse term to describe a necessary process. ‘Austerity’ doesn’t  laugh or listen. ‘Austerity’ is the implacable bank manager. ‘Austerity’ is cruel.

There’s a better word and a better strategy.’ Austerity’ derives from the Greek word meaning “severity”. Frugality derives from the Latin ‘frux’ or fruit  which seems a whole lot better to me.

Frugality is about simplifying, moderating and decluttering. To that end the data protection nonsense (death to entrepreneurial businesses by the way if not for me, the consumer) means I’m being unsubscribed from all that bother left, right and centre. Frugality in action means less of everything, books, papers, appointments, clothes … STUFF!

Being frugal is about being good humouredly ruthless. Like Richard Madeley interviewing hapless Gavin William Secretary of State for Defence.

After avoiding  answering a question several times about whether he now regretted saying “Shut up and go away“ to the Russian State after the Salisbury drama, Gavin was taken aback to be told “All right you won’t answer -  so interview terminated”.

Frugal may be the way forward for all of us. Frugality has a more obvious impact on the rich than the poor whose lives are pretty frugal already. But frugal connotes a more natural and fruitful process.

First we had Google taking over our lives but now we have Frugal as the new and much more controllable zeitgeist. I may sound like a Brexiteer but being frugal means getting back control.

ISN'T IT TYPICAL?

From time to time I sound off about negative thinking and that idiotically masochistic desire for failure. Austerity Britain’s icy fingers beckon us towards the lost decade of misery. At least that’s what the media says. Great headline – “Lost Decade”….

But it was a friend who’d been so ill she’d spent a week in bed to make me realise Radio 4 has to go or just has to be sorted out (Chris Patten are you listening?) She said she had to switch to the cheerfulness of Radio 3 to escape the sneers and sardonic pessimism of the Today programme. And it’s contagious. I listened to the Archers the other day. They’re all candidates for Dignitas.

Yet the rest of us are fine.

The News of the World’s used to claim “all human life is here”. Apparently not, nor in the Sun, Mirror, Mail, Express and the rest (all being daily spanked in the Leveson enquiry with worse to follow for them) because the office for National Statistics have just published “life satisfaction” figures for April-October 2011 of 7.3 out of 10 (with a slightly higher score for a sense of “what I do (overall) being worthwhile”) and for “satisfaction with personal relationships” being a quite storming A* 8.3.

Either these figures are being cooked, which I doubt, or a tranche of would-be opinion formers are doing what they do best “whingeing”. And to borrow from Jeremy Clarkson what we should do is shoot them because such doom-mongers are dangerous.

But as they whinge we are all pretty cheerful. And here’s how to get even better.

Swear.

Not a lot (too much swearing is self-neutralising) but do it with emphatic rage when you do. Research at Keele University proves swearing (in moderation) is a “stress-induced analgaesic” – so every time you say the “f” word equates to taking a Nurofen.

Another reason to be cheerful, I’m told, is the long overdue reduction in University applications – down in England by 15% - but also down in Scotland where it’s still free - by 16%. So it might not just be a fee related decline then whingers ? Prod, prod!

It’s time to stop the complainers confusing us with their misery and time to enjoy our personal relationships and the joy of reflecting on how to simplify our lives, spend a bit less and a bit better.