ANYONE who knows me knows I am an optimist by nature. But this past week has tried my positivity to the extreme.

We are living through times when all we hear are lists of the problems we all face.

We are continually hearing about how underfunded the National Health Service is. Every day I get reports about the waiting times people face when they visit A&E at Lancaster and the winter isn’t really under way.

Then there are the reports about how badly government ministers are handling our discussions with the EU over how we proceed over Brexit. It does seem to suggest that these men really aren’t up to the job.

Then there are millions of workers in the public sector who have not really seen any pay rise for years.

As if that wasn’t enough, official figures predict a rise in unemployment and a further fall in living standards over the coming years.

I could go on but I am getting more depressed with every word I write and I am certain that you know as well as I do that things controlled by the government could barely be described as working well.

So I am sure that you, like me, had some hopes that the chancellor would make some announcements in his autumn statement that at least gave us a flicker of hope.

But sadly he didn’t. All he did was point out that there was an even bigger hole in the public finances than he had thought previously and offered absolutely no suggestions on how this was going to be filled. No-one can come away from seeing the statement he gave feeling anything other than depressed about the next few years with this government in control. If indeed “control” is the right word. In my view they are only just about managing to stay on top of things.

The result of all of this is that we can all look forward to a winter where we will all have to wait even longer to be seen in our hospitals, our roads will get into an even worse condition and teachers, people working in health care and everyone else who works in the public sector can’t expect to see their incomes go up at all.

What makes it worse is that the opposition who are meant to hold the government to account are also barely up to the job. They certainly haven’t had Mrs May and her team on the ropes at all in any of the sessions that I have seen in parliament.

But as I said earlier, I am by nature an optimist. I am doing all that I can to take the fight to the government. Making sure that they answer for their many failings and that, importantly, they are aware of the consequences of their behaviour for ordinary people.

I only wish that I could be more optimistic about them becoming more competent at doing their jobs.