Not since 1988 have I been out of work and back then it was my choice. As you may appreciate all my work has either been postponed or cancelled.

Sadly this is the price you pay for being self employed and hopefully Boris will eventually get a package together to help all of us or in my case Nicola.

This is when you realise how every penny counts and I have taken this time to finally clear out my utility room (Was a Mini Studio). I found a box from WEX for a Panasonic 25mm f1.4 Leica DG Summilux Micro Four Thirds lens costing £399.

It brought it home to me how scatter cash you become when work is plenty and how useful that money would be now.

I saw this post from my friend Alister Chapman and as usual Alister puts it in a nutshell.

Alister “So basically if you are an employee on PAYE, you should have little to fear and the majority will at the very least get 80% of your normal salary (no matter what you might have in savings), a big broad wide system to keep people in work. Nice and generous.

If you are self employed you are fecked. Oh and we are going to ensure that many more self employed will lose all their work.

Self employed are NOT second class citizens.

We are going to close theaters, entertainment venues, cinemas, bars, clubs etc so 10’s of thousands more self employed people will lose their jobs with no safety net other than the equivalent of £94 per week from Universal Credit – If you are able to claim it, forget it if your partner still has a job or you have been sensible and saved for a rainy day.

This is creating a two tier system. All sorts of grants, loans, support for employers and employees, regardless of savings, whether you partner has a job but almost nothing for the hard working self employed that do amazing things for this country. Yet it is the self employed that ARE being the hardest hit. 

You don’t want to be near me right now, I am unbelievably angry.

Why the hell can’t businesses that use freelancers get a grant to cover 80% of the fees they normally pay to their freelancers so that they can get the same support as everybody else? We pay the same taxes as everyone else, we deserve the same level of protection as everyone.“

Well said Alister lets hope Boris and Nicola read this and get their heads together and look after well over half the population.

So what am I doing to pass the time, I have been an educator most of my life, writing and producing educational videos on diabetes and health and safety so as I have become older I decided I wanted to pass on some family recipes and started a YouTube channel called “One Roving Cook”.

Only this week I took the bull by the horns to produce lunches for people self isolating, nothing grand, just good tips on feeding a family of four. These will be mini episodes about 5m long with 5 lunches in each episode, I am thinking off my feet ie. last week I went for some pasta at Tesco to use with some left over chicken…none. I had a wee brainwave in Tesco and bought a ready made pasta meal for two to which I added the extra chicken, so that made a £2.50 tasty meal for 4 people.