The Chancellor needs to remember the grafters when she delivers her Budget - Sarah Todd

But, having worked since leaving school (returning full-time six weeks after having children) and run a small business there are a few choice words it would be therapeutic to throw her way. In fact, it’s all of us who have made our livings in the real-world of the private and self-employed sectors that she should be listening to before pulling on a trouser suit and setting off to parliament with her budget box.

Our country being run by a metropolitan elite who largely have no connection with the working world must surely be enough to make even the mildest mannered vicar swear. Not the working world in some cushy job with a diversity officer and mental health champion. The working world where lads are jumping in vans to do a hard day’s graft before our powers-that-be have even got out of bed; never mind decided between their smashed avocado on toast or overnight oats.

Talking of food, an old friend is a personal trainer and her mantra about weight loss, “move more and eat less,” should be adopted as national policy. Although people pay her to help them with their motivation and to advise on exercise regimes, she would be the first to say there is no need to throw big money at the problem of Britain’s ever-expanding waistlines.

It’s a question of discipline, getting in a routine and sticking to it. Yet, in the 2024-2025 financial year, the NHS in England spent £120m on the weight loss drug Mounjaro.

In a week when your columnist had a long-awaited consultant’s appointment put back another three months, such spending leaves a bitter taste. Sometimes it feels like paying into the system secures nothing but a fast-track to the bottom of the queue. Perhaps next time it would be wise to claim all the delays are causing mental health problems…

In all fairness, it did blow the mind to be stood next to an 85-year-old lady in the Post Office the other day. She wanted to renew her passport but the jobsworth behind the counter said she “couldn’t do it” without an email address. So, in the week ending November 9 this year, 349 irregular migrants, as they are called, arrived on our shores in small boats but one elderly lady from a North Yorkshire market town was sent home almost in tears and unable to get the documentation to leave because she didn’t have an online contact address.

All the above, the lads in vans right through to the lady of a certain age’s passport problems, are mentioned to try and give a wider picture.

From a traditional agricultural background, there is huge awareness that a large chunk of this year has been spent banging on about the Government’s proposed inheritance tax changes and their impact on genuine grass-roots family farms. Not the big businesses or high earners who have used land as a tax loophole over the years. But proper old-fashioned family farms, where the tractors aren’t brand new and every cow has a name.

They were back in London demonstrating yesterday, marking a year since the rural community first descended on the capital in their tractors to protest.

Time will tell whether this last-ditch attempt to demand a rethink will make any difference, but it’s so important that statistics like more than 6,000 agriculture, forestry and fishing businesses closing during this period of uncertainty are shouted from the rooftops. Farm machinery and other related agricultural businesses have already gone to the wall, with almost one in five family farms cutting jobs or pausing setting anybody new on until they know whether next week’s budget will put the final nail in the coffin of their holding’s future.

Of course, we rely on broadcasters such as the BBC to have reported fairly from the protest. For far too long farmers have been portrayed in the media as huntin’ and shootin’ types, the landed gentry rather than sons and daughters of the soil.

One thing the politicians can’t take away is the feeling of all being in the same boat (not a dinghy), that these last few pre-budget months have brought about between so many walks of life.