The patience of the squeezed middle has been tested by consecutive governments - Sarah Todd

While so many seem to get money thrown at them, our offspring were awarded the most basic maintenance payment meaning we have, for the last six years, been sending several hundred pounds a month to cover the rip-off of student accommodation. They could have taken out loans, but we haven’t been brought up like that; lumbering them with bank balances in the red seems a backwards way to start out in life.

As an aside, we still had to send this money during covid when The Daughter wasn’t even living in her house.

Currently, our society seems stacked against the worker and the saver (Chancellor Rachel Reeves is circling like a cuckoo waiting to get into any nest eggs). It’s a system that needs sorting out. We had these children and, yes, we should support them.

But news last week that unemployed people on sickness benefits will soon receive £2,500 more a year than a minimum wage worker really is enough to make a vicar swear.

Sat in the chemist in our local market town the other day waiting for a prescription and over a dozen people walked in - all young and of working age - and none of them paid. Only this five-footer. What must it be like in more urban areas?

There was a report on the news the other week about asylum seekers being housed in a once beautiful old hotel in Hull. Figures from March this year show 32,345 asylum seekers living in such taxpayer-funded accommodation.

It’s easy to find online a little more about the Royal Hotel, once a beautiful jewel in Hull’s crown, somewhere the older generation can remember going for special meals and celebrations. The calibre of place that any visiting dignitaries or celebrities would stay.

Guess what? We are having two nights in a hotel for the degree ceremony. Such a treat as we haven’t had a proper holiday for at least the last half a dozen years. We did the same when our daughter graduated and made a couple of nights break of it.

Presumably all those striking public sector workers like the doctors, teachers and train drivers will still have been going on fancy holidays. Less so those self-employed or working for small businesses.

The recent death of former Conservative party chairman Sir Norman Tebbit brought reminiscences of his nickname ‘Onyerbike’ after telling millions of unemployed Britons about how in the 1930s, when faced with the dole, his father ‘got on his bike’ to look for work.

Now, there seems to be no shame in taking state handouts, whereas back then people felt embarrassed at having to accept a helping hand such as free school dinners or unemployment benefits.

Such payments have gone from being a safety net during dark days, such as ill health, job loss or bereavement, to just being expected. Taxpayers understanding that they could be in the same boat - no asylum pun intended - with a simple twist of fate, a bit of bad luck, has been sorely tested. Now we have generations of families who have never worked. Oh to have a government that would dare to set scroungers on doing something useful like picking fruit.

Talking of fruit, in another example of bonkers Britain, Oxfordshire County Council has banned meat, dairy, and eggs from its events - yet continues to serve imported fruit.

The Countryside Alliance has called out the hypocrisy of the plant-based initiative which seems to fly in the face of the council’s push for reducing food miles and environmental impact; claiming the free vegan lunches provided to councillors cost taxpayers more than previous conventional meals.

Calling for a reversal on the council’s meat ban Mo Metcalf-Fisher, the Countryside Alliance’s director of external affairs, rightly says: “It never made sense to ban grass-fed beef from a farm up the road, to only source fruit from South America, for example.

“British meat is vastly sustainable and the answer to cutting emissions lies with supporting and promoting our farmers and their produce, not policing what people eat.”

The Son will be hoping his mother doesn’t inquire as to the university’s dietary policies at today’s degree ceremony.

Here’s to drinking a toast - and eating a steak - to the end of it.