That Autumn Statement warrants a word or two.
Whether or not it is necessary medicine, the casualties will be ordinary people in ordinary households suffering higher energy bills, higher Council Tax, higher mortgages and paying more tax because of frozen allowances – for years and years to come.
Add to this for many, worry about the costs of becoming old or less able, and concern that education and the NHS still need to catch up. What, pray, do we get for all this money we are paying over? Answer: less than nothing. Literally, less than nothing.

Next year we will all be seven per cent worse off and the services we receive are certain to be diminished in the future.
Liberal Democrats fought long and hard to raise tax allowances as the best way to protect the least well-off. We now face the ludicrous position whereby someone on the new state pension is likely to be paying tax on it before the allowances rise again.
It is utterly underwhelming that while so many will see their mortgages rise steeply, banking bonuses and non-dom tax breaks remain untouched, and the windfall tax measures stay relatively soft.
That JFK line “don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” has been rattling around in my head.
Even if we are in somewhat of a hole, I believe we should at least be positive and show willing. The follow-up question, therefore, is what is the bit that we can do, how can we in Dorset contribute to improving the nation’s productivity?
Perhaps by being in the active workforce longer – apprenticeship rather than non-vocational degrees and not retiring too early. We can retrain. The green economy is crying out for people to fit/refit green solutions. We can all enhance our digital skills. The CBI says that two-thirds of firms have digital skills vacancies.

Employers can take training more seriously – too many firms opt to recruit new talent rather than train internally. We can ask our schools to provide their charges with more insight into employment opportunities as well as further education. We can also volunteer to help coach or train once we have taken that retirement, perhaps even before.

It is tempting to follow the Elon Musk lead and suggest we could all work harder but that is not the issue. As always, the answer is working smarter. That applies to Prime Ministers and Chancellors just as much as to the people of Dorset.
Let us now see some properly integrated strategy, such as a meaningful manpower plan for the NHS, such as an integrated plan for renewables across all technologies to meet our zero-carbon obligations and to wean ourselves off fossil fuel dependency.