LUKE MARSDEN: Proud of Wigan in the face of the cost of living crisis

But have you stopped to ask yourself, what does it actually mean to you?

It’s about tightening the belt, as the old saying goes.

For me I’ve written previously about conducting a direct debit audit and trimming the fat.

I’m even making the switch to a fully electric car, ironically in the short term I doubt this will save me money with the cost per kilowatt at present.Wigan’s very own Kay Burley returned to her roots this week and has hosted her breakfast show live from her old school in Beech Hill, DW Stadium, Uncle Joe’s factory and The Muffin Man bakery.

All these Wigan landmarks showed Kay the true Wigan spirit, despite facing incredibly hard times currently.

I couldn’t be prouder of how our town came across. Resilience is the backbone of Wigan as I said to Kay when I appeared on the show on Thursday.The MP for Safeguarding this week made a faux pas on live TV by saying that people struggling should get better paid jobs or take on secondary jobs.

I work in communications and the free PR advice I’d ironically give the Minister for Safeguarding is to safeguard herself from further TV appearances.

If you actually take the time to work out if getting a second job would help in these current circumstances you’d probably be surprised to know it won’t.Things are tough but as we’re seeing daily across the world, others have it far tougher and I think our Wigan attitude of “make do and carry on” is something we are seeing being adopted nationally.

The cost of living crisis is our new pandemic and our town survived that and we can survive this.

We’re a proud town and I know many don’t like to ask for a helping hand but if you can’t ask now then when can you?

Check in on your friends and neighbours, ask if they fancy a brew and a chat about, well, the price of milk. I have actually considered going milk-free recently…