Money makes the world go round? Maybe not anymore

I remember blogging last year (February, The end of the world as we know it?) about my belief that within my lifetime the way the world revolves around money would come to an end. I just didn't expect it to start happening so soon.

Whenever I read a newspaper or watch television these days, it seems there's an article about how poor people are feeling and how to save money. The middle classes are embattled, we are told, struggling with mortgages, council tax, utility bills and school fees. They have been christened 'the coping classes' and it's apparently respectable now to shop at Aldi and Lidl. The aptly-named Jane Shilling lists in The Times all the things she can't afford - to fix the leaking roof, get the car serviced, take the cat to the vet - and Christina Odone talks about her 'genteel poverty' in The Telegraph, although it's hard to feel much sympathy for someone whose idea of poverty is admitting that 'unless Freddy gets a scholarship, the family tradition of sending every son to Eton is beyond our means'.

The other day we had Quentin Wilson on ITV1 telling us how to squeeze more miles out of the petrol tank. We watched with interest but unfortunately learnt nothing new. I'd like to know how to squeeze more heating out of the oil tank. Nobody would believe how little we've had the heating on this winter. At least it's spring, I was thinking, but then we had an oil delivery and it cost almost 25% more than in the autumn. As Jane Shilling says, when you cut back and back and are still strapped for cash, it's a very insecure feeling.

As I said last year, I do think we will all be much better off not striving constantly to earn and spend money, but what is going to happen in the interim is unimaginable.