Yesterday when I was over at the girlfriend's home for coffee we had one of those "perfect storms", all five of her sisters turned up as well, luckily she has a large kitchen table and enough chairs for us all to sit around it.
As you can imagine it was quite a lively discussion!
Now I have known this family for years, very much one of the old large working class Yorkshire families, but all of the sisters have done very well for themselves.
One ended up as head of the accounts department for a well known fizzy drinks maker. Another had been head buyer for an industrial clothing supplier. One of the others with her former husband had run a very successful commercial plumbers. Whilst the youngest had been boss of the sales department for a well known Yorkshire biscuit manufacturer.
They'd all left their working class background behind and made it into the middle class. A credit to both their parents and Yorkshire as a whole.
Then last year their worlds began to fall apart, redundancy, enforced changes to contracts, even bankruptcy has blighted their lives. One of them was even asking about Jobseeker's Allowance, the first time in her life she had been forced to seek aid from the State.
Quite a lot of moaning as you can guess, but what struck me was that none of them could see any hope on the horizon. Nor did they feel that "them down south" even understood their plight. Or have a clue about putting us back on course again.
They also felt it was something that would continue to affect their families for a long time to come.
Now I've blogged about my contempt for our political elite and what I'd like to see happen to them. But even Harriet Harperson would have cringed if she'd been a fly on the wall in that kitchen yesterday!
There was genuine anger in the air.
So if our political elite don't get off their expense fattened arses, hurriedly come up with a cunning plan to sort things out, they might find the lynch mob being led by some very upset Yorkshire lassies!
One of the sisters was almost in tears in how she was struggling to keep working, her employer had changed from providing a company card and fuel card, to making them use their own cars and claim the fuel back.
Only trouble was she was averaging about £140 a week in fuel, even changing her car to the most economical diesel she could afford, yet having to wait a month to six weeks to get her money back.
And all Cast Iron / Miliband worries about chocolate oranges!
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