There’s a well-worn phrase which is said to be a translation from an old Chinese curse which goes something along the lines of ‘may you live in interesting times’.

On the face of it, this is harmless enough but it’s not as innocuous as it seems. Far from being a blessing, the phrase is invariably used ironically.

You have to ask if life is better for you in ‘uninteresting times’ when everything is peaceful and tranquil or in ‘interesting times’ when you are surrounded by turmoil and trouble.

I mention this after a couple of days of watching rolling 24-hour news. I have now come to the conclusion I really shouldn’t do that, it’s not good for my mental health.

A couple of weeks ago, and in no particular order, we had the continuing humanitarian disaster of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the governor of the Bank of England warning that the effects of the war on food prices could be apocalyptic (his word, not mine).

Then there was the report that inflation could reach 10 per cent by winter. And you can add to this soaring energy costs that are forcing some people to go without food.

Truly things were looking bleak then finally, months after Labour and the Lib Dems called for a windfall tax on energy producers to ease the looming crisis, the government buckled and did a screeching U-turn, with Chancellor Rishi Sunak magically producing a support package ‘for the most vulnerable’ that should hopefully take the sting out of the October energy price cap rise.

And to be fair, it is much more generous than most people expected so far be it from me to suggest the timing of the windfall tax announcement the day after the Sue Gray report was anything other than a coincidence.

If only Mr Sunak could have warned his colleagues what he was to do, it would have spared them the embarrassment of going public with ‘useful’ advice about how poor people can cope with the crisis.

Variously, we had Tory MPs and ministers telling us to stop buying ‘expensive’ branded food and switch to supermarket ‘value’ ranges; that it’s our fault we are poor because we haven’t learned to cook and if we budget, we can produce a meal for 30p; oh and if we’re struggling financially, we should just work longer or get a better-paid job.

(Out of interest, if we all get better-paid jobs, who will do the poorly paid ones?)

In my considered opinion, these are the sort of demeaning, patronising, ill-conceived, out of touch suggestions we have come to expect from a party and government that sees us as the little people who have got what we deserve.

They have no conception of what life is really like for millions of people who are struggling to make ends meet.

As food and poverty campaigner Jack Monroe said: “You can’t cook meals from scratch with nothing. You can’t buy cheap food with nothing. The issue is not ‘skills’, it’s 12 years of Conservative cuts to social support.

“The square root of nothing is always going to be nothing, no matter how creatively you’re told to dice it.”

To be frank, I’m not really surprised at Tories trying to defend the indefensible. It’s the same callous mindset, that same sense of entitlement and superiority that saw them think nothing of partying at No 10 while we were all obeying Covid lockdown rules, as the Sue Gray report clearly revealed.

Let’s face it, the basic MP salary is £84,144 plus significant (in some cases massive) expenses, coupled with subsidised bars and restaurants at the Palace of Westminster (subsidised by us, the taxpayers I might add).

A healthy income such as that insulates MPs from the harsh realities faced by many people.

This is the government that removed the £20-a-week Covid Universal Credit uplift while MPs almost simultaneously got a salary increase of more than £2,000 a year.

It’s the government that made a manifesto pledge to maintain the pensions triple lock and then thought nothing of breaking that pledge just as inflation soared (and for the record, we have one of the lowest pensions in the developed world).

It’s the government that tells us it is a tax cutting government while simultaneously putting up the tax take to the highest level in generations.

Oh, and don’t forget, it is a government that told us it had signed an ‘oven ready’ deal to ‘get Brexit done’. That was just a lie, believed by gullible and the hard of thinking.

The deal was so far from oven ready that the government is now prepared to break international law by unilaterally tearing up the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So it very much looks like a government led by people who acted in bad faith are going to provoke a trade war with the European Union.

Yes, that’s just what we need at a time of greatest economic turmoil in a generation.

So as I said, may we live in interesting times.