The Budget makes us strivers question why we even bother toiling away - Sarah Todd

This move, from the newlywed village cottage, was possible at the age of 29 in a world that rewarded hard graft and saving.

There were sacrifices; we didn’t go on a foreign holiday for the following decade and still have more hand-me-down items (even the ironing board was His Mother’s) than new.

A picture that paints a sadly stark contrast to today, with tens of thousands of 20 and 30-somethings turning out for work every day but still sleeping in their childhood bedrooms; unable to afford even the most basic starter property.

Or those who have never worked, claiming benefits, who seem to churn out children like they were going out of fashion yet get handed a home by our nanny state.

But back to that ironing pile. It was a lady from the village who came for a weekly muck out in return for a bit of cash to top up her pension. She also stepped in to do the odd bit of babysitting.

There were no terms or conditions. No diversity officer. Just a kitchen table bleached to within an inch of its life and a fireplace shone so bright you could see your face in it.

Mutual respect, a few crisp notes left on this side. A perfect circular economy. Ann spending her wages in the local market town on treats like having her hair done.

A cleaner has long been a thing of the past; an extravagance. For a while a former soldier - who left creases you could cut your finger on - tackled the ironing pile.

With mathematics an enigma, spending Wednesday afternoon ironing while swearing at the television as Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered her budget speech helped make sense of it all.

What is the point busting a gut to earn more only for this awful envy-driven Labour government to nab it? To dole it out - deliberate use of the word dole - to those that don’t work.

We fed and clothed our children and would have felt ashamed if we hadn’t. While a hallway full of little wellies would have been delightful, we stuck to two so they could be afforded alongside work.

They were our responsibility and we have only just come through the other end of six years of spending something like a second mortgage on rents to see both through university.

Doing the right thing, trying to set them off into the working world without an overdraft before they’ve started. What thanks do you get from the Government for not sponging?

Yes, this week’s budget has made this reporter question the lifelong habit of getting on the blower and always trying to do more business. With well over four million self-employed people in the UK she won’t be alone.

To finish, not at the ironing board but back to those farming roots, in the last 35 years of writing the right words have never been harder to find.

Family farms have been dealt the most bitter blow with Sir Keir Starmer and his cabinet of townies ploughing ahead with their raid of envy; dressed up as an inheritance tax.

Talk to any of the farmers that put out moorland fires or who dropped everything to dig out drivers stranded in last week’s snowfall.

They aren’t in it for the money - many don’t even draw a minimum wage - it’s just a way of life to be handed onto the next generation.

Not media savvy and politely playing by the rules left agriculture an easy target. Banned at the eleventh-hour from bringing their tractors into the capital as even milkshakes and a splash of the white stuff in a latte were made a dirty word by yet another tax.

It would never happen to the pro-Palestinian protestors. Dictats on dairy products while puberty blockers for children wanting to change sex are dished out in our weird world.

How farming and the wider countryside has missed King Charles since he stepped away from the soil to take over his birthright. He intrinsically understood the role rural life plays in the wider economy.

Pubs, village shops and schools, livestock markets, butchers; he campaigned to save them all - and so much more - while Prince of Wales.

If farming and traditional countryside communities are to survive, they need to toughen up.

Stop rolling over when new-broom neighbours complain about smells from pigs or mud on the road from potato planting.

Give the metropolitan elite (and their off-lead dogs) that want to take over the countryside - yet haven’t a clue how to run it - an inch and they’ll snatch your acres and way of life from under your nose before the cows come home.

Finally, there is an old farming term about pulling a light harrow, not putting in a hard day’s toil, and we ignore this dangerous trend at our peril. It needs ironing out...

Sarah Todd is a journalist specialising in farming and country life. Read her weekly column in Wednesday’s edition of The Yorkshire Post.