People continue to feel the pinch
The announcement this week that inflation has fallen to its lowest level in two-and-a-half years was, of course, welcome news.
It would be a push, however, to suggest that Scots will be feeling any great impact from this on their bills and weekly costs.
In a bizarre coincidence, just as inflation has showed signs of falling, Liz Truss has reared her head in the media.
Truss’s premiership is one of the major reasons our economy has been in a position of having to recover instead of attempting to thrive.
That’s why it’s rather jarring to hear that inflation is a ‘good thing’ for Rishi Sunak and his Conservative party.
It was his party after all who put Truss into Downing Street and let her infamous experiments, including £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts, wreak havoc on our economy.
Cleaning up its own mess isn’t something a government should be praised for – that action should be considered the bare minimum.
Regardless of what the figures say about inflation, people are undoubtedly feeling the pinch financially.
Over parliament’s recess, I visited the Foodshare at Dunterlie Resource Centre.
I got to the meet the dedicated volunteers who run the service and some members of the local community who currently depend on the Foodshare’s provisions including food, warmth, and money advice.
As fantastic as it was to see a community come together to support itself, it was also eyeopening at how much demand there was on the service.
This rising demand can also be seen elsewhere in the west of Scotland.
Renfrewshire Foodbank are planning to offer evening distributions of food due to the demand of people asking for support.
The rising demand on food banks is a bitter reminder of just how badly Scots have been let down by our two governments.
It shouldn’t be possible for a working person to require a food bank yet under the SNP and the Tories it has become a bitter reality.
They have blown their chances of being credible challengers of poverty.
The SNP, despite 16 years of power, have failed to show a long-term plan of how to reduce poverty and are predicted to fail to meet their own poverty related targets.
Both governments, despite decades of power, have failed to demonstrate that they have the ideas or the will to reduce poverty and ultimately remove the need for food banks.
The difference with Scottish Labour is that we have put forward policies that will aim to make in-work poverty a thing of the past.
These bold, necessary plans include banning zero-hour contracts, outlawing the disgraceful practice of fire and rehire, abolishing the Tories’ shameful anti-strike laws and introducing a real living wage that’s extended to all adults and expanding access to sick pay.
These policies are about making work pay and offering people the certainty that if they are working, they cannot fall into poverty.
You won’t hear SNP politicians in particular criticising Labour’s New Deal for Working People.
That’s because even they know it’s full of serious ideas.
We need serious ideas to tackle poverty and, sadly, we haven’t had any from a government in Holyrood or Westminster for a very long time.