Spend Less...

Our Prime Minister has spoken to the nation. Prices – that were already on the up and up – have now taken an upward quantum leap … or very soon will, following the fuel cost hike.
The increases will be felt by every one of us, affecting staples and essentials that none of us can do without: from bread, to electricity, to cooking gas, to transportation fares, to groceries, to …
Those supposedly in the know, those who are in the leadership positions from which, it is calculated, we are to be guided, supported and protected – and this refers not only to the people we elected to office but also the bureaucrats and technocrats who form their support structure – seem to have little solution to the quicksand in which we are all quickly enough sinking, except to tell us that we must endeavour to spend less.
Words, a once-popular song states, are easy to be spoken. Action, we have always been told, is the thing … and we, the population mass, are now the ones, they tell us, to pass into action – by spending less.
Spend less, when we still have the same distances on our roads to travel in order to go about our habitual duties … and gasoline has gone up by $3.25 a gallon.
Spend less, when the price of bread will go up and we have to purchase it to feed our children. Should we cut each child down from two loaves to one? How else to spend less?
Spend less, when minibus fares will certainly rise and we have to get to work and our children to school. How do we spend less? Walk?

Spend less, when the already-costly grocery items will become more expensive. Are we to cut out milk, butter, eggs, chicken etc., and try to subsist on boiled green bananas (hopefully, we shall be able to buy those, although government’s advice is that we each grow our own in order to cut expenses) with no fish and/or meat of any kind to accompany them?
Spend less, when electricity costs will skyrocket … are we looking at a voluntary nationwide blackout, in order to save some money?
The spend-less concept sounds like good advice … and it would be, if it were to be applied to expenditure for outings, blockos, shows, smoking, drinking etc., and those who propose it want to make us believe that those are the only areas where the cuts should or would apply.
But the truth is that there are certain essentials necessary for survival, without which we cannot do and where we shall definitely be unable to spend less. In fact, like it or not we shall be obligated to spend more, no matter how much we are being told to do the opposite.
What we need, are more measures put in place, by those who are mandated to do so, to slow down or halt the upwardly-spiralling costs. Or else spend less by sending them home, so that the entire nation will save, in these belt-tightening times.