Why the economy is like Ms Nomates buying shoes

I understand my own economy: Broke from Monday to Friday and desperate by the weekend.

A great lesson on economy comes from the famous quote. ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery’ – Charles Dickens.

Every man and his wife can understand this principle.

They may not live by it but they know what it means to feel miserable when in debt.

Our country’s economy has been managed by a succession of idiots who have eventually managed to run this once great nation in to the ground.

It’s no good saying it is the fault of Labour or the Tories, they are as incompetent as each other.

They chop and change, change and chop, huff and puff, puff and huff, boom and bust and spend our money into trying to hold on to power for themselves rather than ensuring we have the best deal for we British citizens.

It’s no good saying ‘it’s a world-wide problem’.

Half the world is fighting or has fought each other so what true loyalty will they have to us?

Whatever ‘the economy’ is, it is a strange old business.

Those who have managed themselves in to a position where they can manage us have only managed to create a financial services economy.

Financial services are the banks that also prove they know nothing about managing money. We are now worth as much as the real estate on a Monopoly board. It looks great on paper.

We used to build trains and boats and planes. (Does anyone hear music or it is just me?) Our tradesmen who were busy building things just had to nip next door to borrow a spanner but now hardly anybody knows what a spanner is.

And in case anybody doesn’t know what a screwdriver is, it’s a cocktail.

We earn nothing from men with spanners any more because someone always puts a spanner in the works.

We don’t get the work. Foreigners get it. We have foreigners here who get it when it’s going. But now it’s gone we don’t send them away to where the work is. They have ‘rights’.

We invented lots of things, which were good money earners but somehow the benefits seem to have evaded us.

An example is Frank Hornby, from Liverpool, who invented Meccano but the winners of the biggest building brand seems to be Lego. (A Scouser should have definitely invented it. ‘Lego of me arm’. We had the name already.) I’m not against all foreign invention and capitalisation of such. Lego comes from Denmark by Ole kirk Christiansen. It doesn’t appear to be the case that he ever visited the UK but I’m sure he knew that we were construction brothers under the skin.

Sweden gave us Ikea and I for one wish they had kept it a secret.

It takes a lifetime to safari around the showroom hunting for an item which takes a second lifetime to construct. The reward for catching nothing is to enjoy a plate of Swedish meatballs for lunch.

I use the word ‘enjoy’ loosely. The Swedes have built their economy by keeping us too busy building their funiture to build ours.

The other definition of an economy is, ‘An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labour, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area’.

This is where Ms Nomates comes into her own and rises above the rest of us. She drives the economy. You only have to spend time with her while she shops to understand.

Ms Nomates treats shopping as a career and she also helps the economy by making her money make the world go round.

She has a unique approach to shopping. If I might demonstrate? This is how she buys a pair of shoes.

She orders a pair from the catalogue for the bargain price of £30. She doesn’t like them.

They don’t look the same as the picture. Delivery charge is only £3.50 and return is free. She has no shoes.

She drives to TK MAXX and let us assume fuel at 20p per mile. Return travel costs £5.60 only to discover they don’t go with her outfit.

She returns them and again spends £5.60. She wants to try shopping in Chester so I suggest going by bus. We get a free pensioner ticket for me and a child return for her. That’s our little joke. Total cost £4.

The shoes purchased were only £20 and the fading of one of them doesn’t become apparent until we get home. Ms Nomates complains the bus ride is to long so return them by car at a fuel cost of £6.40.

Sale items are exchangeable but not refundable and there is nothing that floats her boat so she waits to go back on a later date.

Meanwhile she finds a pair she had forgotten about, at the back of the wardrobe. The fuel again to return to spend the credit note is £6.40.

The total spent in trying to save money on a pair of shoes is £31.50.

She has no shoes only a credit note for £20. She buys a handbag.

It strikes me that our governments behave in a very similar way with our money.

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